How clean is clean?

Abstract

There are approximately 6.5 million surgical procedures performed within England each year. These procedures are spread across the 182 acute NHS trusts which themselves cover the 249 hospitals with sterile service departments (SSDs) in England (NHS Estates, 2001). Of concern has been the emergence of evidence that highly robust infectious agents such as the Scrapie-form of the prion protein (PrPsc), causing variant or sporadic Creuztfeldt-Jakob disease, may remain viable following standard hospital decontaminating procedures (Taylor, 1999). This led the Department of Health to issue revised guidelines on the decontamination of instruments (Health Service Circulars 1999 178 and 1999 179) in August 1999. However, it is clear that subsequent and ongoing monitoring of cleaning standards must be maintained in order to ensure the highest decontamination standards are reached and maintained, and therefore reduce any possibility of nosocomial infection