PCD’S & CHEMICAL INDICATORS FOR YOUR STERILISER

A hand-in-hand system for best practice in your facility

The GKE PCD, Documentation Labels and Type 6 Chemical Indicators go together to offer you a market leading solution to monitor your sterilising process and ensure the best outcomes for your patients.

Why should you consider using the GKE PCD?

The GKE process challenge device (PCD) is a high-quality product manufactured in Germany. The stainless-steel helix is a patented design, and the device will last you for more than 10,000 cycles when handled in accordance with the manufacturer IFU’s. The stainless-steel helix simulates your stainless-steel instruments, mimicking the flash-off characteristics of steam from stainless-steel.

The GKE Orange PCD meets with the requirements for the “hollow load test” of EN 867-5 which is the level of requirement for type testing B Type Benchtop Sterilisers - or in more simple terms your Daily Air Removal and Steam Penetration Test.

“Bowie Dick Tests” and “Helix Tests” are both Type Tests – meaning a test for the steriliser to ensure it can meet the parameters outlined in the standards for steam sterilisers for air removal and steam penetration. A “helix test” meeting with EN 867-5 offers a greater level of challenge to the steriliser than a porous level “Bowie Dick Test.” Therefore we recommend if you are sterilising hollow instruments (like hand pieces and burs) and do a helix test with our Orange PCD, then you don’t need to do a Bowie Dick Test as well, regardless of what else you are sterilising.

Routine Monitoring of every load is a mandatory requirement in ISO 17665-1.

Consideration should be given to the use of a PCD in every load – particularly when critical items and implants are being sterilised. Only a PCD can monitor for certain changes in the process, such as the introduction of air (or non-condensable gases) in the steam (which can prevent sterilisation from occurring) issues with the vacuum pump or even rarer issues like hairline cracks in chamber walls – trust us, it’s happened. The GKE PCD can detect minute changes in the air removal and steam penetration characteristics of the process. The steriliser itself or chemical indicators alone cannot do this (eg Type 1 process indicators or Type 6 package indicators).

And what happens if we do our Daily Air Removal and Steam Penetration Test today and it passed, but we do one tomorrow and it fails? What does that mean for all packs that were sterilised in between? It means we have no guarantee for sterility for our instruments. Routine monitoring of every load with a PCD can detect a potential issue sooner.

Simplified Batch Control Identification

The GKE Manual Documentation System offers a simplified and cost-effective method for tracking key information about the sterilisation of instruments and other items in a practice.

Computer printed documentation labels with barcodes only link the contents of a load with a sterilisation cycle.

We must go back to other means of cycle verification to prove that a pack went through a steam sterilisation process. While electronic cycle reports or physical chart printouts verify that cycle parameters were achieved, it is also mandatory to use a Type 1 chemical indicator on all packs as visual proof each pack was exposed to a steam sterilisation process.

It’s of great importance to have an adequate means of tracking instruments from their reprocessing to their point of use. The GKE Documentation Labels with Type 1 indicator offers you the following key benefits:

1. Instant clear visual verification of a process having taken place.

2. Can remove the processed label from the pack and adhere to documentation.

3. Can be maintained for years, and chemical indicator will not change.

4. Four label colours to choose from (green, blue, red, and yellow).

GKE Type 6 Chemical Indicators for Packs

The GKE Type 6 package indicators give information about their point of placement and indicate that sterilisation conditions have been met in that position. (Note: they can’t give information about the insides of hollow instruments like a PCD can).

A Type 6 indicator is often recommended as it reacts to all critical variables, i.e. temperature, time and steam.

The benefit of the GKE indicators is the double self-adhesive backing that can be adhered to documentation (together with the Type 1 indicator).

LAUREN KONTUS BSc(EnvSc) Sales and Contracts Manager GKE Australia