title: Presence of protein deposits on 'cleaned' re-usable anaesthetic equipment.
abstract: Twenty previously used and supposedly clean, sterilised laryngeal mask airways, five bougies and five Magill forceps from the operating theatre, and 61 laryngoscope blades from different sites within a single hospital were randomly collected and stained with erythrosin B dye, which stains proteins if present on surfaces. All 20 laryngeal mask airways had been used before and were stained: four (20%) showed heavy staining, five (25%) moderate staining and 11 (55%) mild staining. Two unused laryngeal mask airways used as controls were without staining. Thirty-four of 44 (77%) laryngoscope blades taken from the operating theatres, six of seven (86%) from the overnight intensive recovery room and all 10 (100%) from the wards were stained. None of the other items was totally clean. These findings suggest that current cleaning methods do not remove all proteinaceous material.
authors.affiliation: Guy's, King's College and St. Thomas' Hospitals' Medical and Dental School, London, UK. donald.miller@kcl.ac.uk
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Youkhana
authors.forename: W U
authors.initials: WU
authors.lastname: Karunaratne
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pearce
mesh_terms: D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000635:transmission*; D004866:Equipment Contamination; D017743:Equipment Reuse; D004923:Erythrosine; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D006801:Humans; D017214:Laryngeal Masks; D020704:Laryngoscopes; D017096:Prion Diseases / Q000635:transmission*; D011506:Proteins / Q000032:analysis*; D013242:Sterilization / Q000592:standards
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D011506:Proteins; D004923:Erythrosine