Hi All,

I am looking for information and advice about the reprocessing of unopened sterile items that have lost their sterilisation batch cycle stickers. Do they need to go through the whole cleaning process or can they just be unwrapped and rewrapped and sterilised again.

Thank you
Elsa Raiskio

Dear Elsa,

Good CSSD-Praxis is - to go through the reprocessing cycle.

• Instruments need to be cleaned before resterilization any time they are opened used or unused. Without cleaning between sterilization possible steam deposits on instruments can accumulate. Steam has not always the highest quality due to high alkalinity in the boiler or sometimes from pipes along its way, mixing with e.g. of metals and other particles.
• Unused linen should be laundered between sterilizations, in order to restore moisture to them (dried out fibres reduce the ability of the fabric to form a barrier to microorganisms).

Kind regards
Josy Holdener