Webinar Addresses Forced Air Contamination Risk

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

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WEBINAR SERIES

Webinar Addresses Forced Air Contamination Risk

Staff report

The OR Today webinar “Forced Air Contamination Risk in the OR” was eligible for 1 CE credit. The presentation was sponsored by Encompass Group. OR Today has been approved and is licensed to be a continuing education provider with the California Board of Registered Nurses, License #16623.

In this webinar, Victor Lange, director, infection prevention and healthcare risk management/epidemiology of Alta Hospital Systems explained the infection and crosscontamination risk associated with use of forced-air warming on patients in the OR. He discussed ways OR professionals can contribute to improved facility risk review and improved patient-warming and infection-prevention protocols. He also explored new findings on patient warming.

During a question-and-answer session, Lange provided additional insights. One question was, “Are there specific areas of the forced air warming devices that contain higher concentrations of microorganism contamination or colonization?”

“As I mentioned before, the forced air warming units – as well as most any devices – have many complicated components, or parts in this case. We were identifying pathogens on the hose connections to the machines also on the hoses themselves on the inside of the hoses as well as improperly maintained filters on the devices themselves. So many nooks and crannies are present on a lot of these devices and all it takes is just the improper processing of any device or any component to lead to contamination. We need something that’s able to be disposed of. Even if you have components that are disposable, you need to make sure that the reusable components of the device are processed accordingly. Again, the highest correlation was attributed to hoses, hose connections of the device itself through which the warm air was blowing and subsequently blowing through the device and blowing out around the OR suite,” Lange said.

He was also asked if there is a way to ensure that the forced air warming device is completely disinfected internally and externally?

Lange replied that it is very, very difficult to ensure 100% disinfection of virtually any of these devices unless there is a way to send them through a sterilizer because there are areas of the device that can’t be disinfected to the highest potential unless they are subjected to some sort of gas or a technique where they are immersed or completely saturated with a disinfectant for a specified period of time.

“In summary, it is very difficult to guarantee the complete disinfection of such devices,” he added.

The webinar is available for on-demand viewing at ORTodayWebinars.live.

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