You should keep manual cleaning to a minimum when cleaning your surgical instruments. The most crucial factor is soap selection, which should be of neutral PH. You should never use a soap that isn't exclusively designed to be used on surgical instruments. The manual washing part is where scrubing occurs to clean serrations, lumens and box locks.
Don't Use These Soaps on your Surgical equipment: - Housekeeping soaps - Laundry soaps - Surgeon's hand soap - Iodine soap
Ultrasonic Surgical Instrument Cleaning: The cleaning of surgical equipment with ultrasonic energy is the single best practice you can do. By doing this you'll be removing the bioburden and its okay to use for use on your surgical instruments. The more time you have the surgical instruments in the ultrasonic cleaner, the more clean they will become. Only use a neutral PH ultrasonic solution and never put manual instrument soap in the ultrasonic cleaner.
Rinsing of Surgical Instruments: After washing or ultrasonic cleaning, rinse the medical instruments with h2o, preferably with distilled water. Remove residue left on from detergents, both from ultrasonic and machine washing.
Drying of Surgical Instruments: To avoid water spots on your surgical tools never allow water to dry on to it, this will turn into stains.
Surgical Instrument Lubrication: All hinged surgical instrument sets need to be lubricated after each use. A spray-on lubricant or machine applied lubrication works best for instruments for surgery. The most reconmended are neutral PH lubricants. Mineral based lubricants should never be used as steam, cannot penetrate mineral oils and instruments will not achieve sterility.
Other Surgical Instrument Tips: - With heated solutions you can improve the temperature of the tank. - Change solution on a daily basis or when bioburden is noticed in the tank. - The longer the medical tools are left in the better. - To reduce cleaning efficiency do not overload ultrasonic cleaner. - Surgical instruments always are in the open position when placed in the ultrasonic cleaner.