Sterile Processing

In 2011, there were two events at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) headquarters where the key issues of medical device reprocessing were raised and discussed. The first event was put on by FDA staff, with an assist from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI). During this two-day meeting in June, a parade of industry experts presented their research and experience to describe the key challenges facing the healthcare industry when it comes to effective device reprocessing.

New research at Harvard explains how bacterial biofilms expand to form slimy mats on teeth, pipes, surgical instruments and crops. Through experiment and mathematical analysis, researchers have shown that the extracellular matrix (ECM), a mesh of proteins and sugars that can form outside bacterial cells, creates osmotic pressure that forces biofilms to swell and spread. The ECM mechanism is so powerful that it can increase the radius of some biofilms five-fold within 24 hours. The results have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.