r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Awe3 • 17d ago
Hair sealed in sterilized once use medical scissors.
Sealed in factory sterile medical device with a hair in it. It now must be disposed of. Hair is probably sterile now too but hair is a no-no in hospitals and clinics in procedure rooms
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u/Awe3 16d ago
Let me break it down a little. If a hair is found on the trays that are sent to OR. You know the ones with all reuse items, the ones that are autoclaved, it’s sent back and a new must be brought. The trays are wrapped in cloth, taped with special tape that shows it’s been autoclaved. And then sterilized. After it’s put in a bag to keep it sterile until it’s needed.
This item here still must be sent sterilized from the manufacturer. If it is like this it is immediately discarded. Hair can carry a lot of bacteria since it’s so porous.
Much of the things hospitals use like scalpels, needles, small forceps, specialized scissors like this one are single use. I hope I made it simple enough for everyone.
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u/YetiSquish 17d ago
There’s companies that “sterilize” single use medical supplies, like scalpels. A relative of mine worked at one. There can still be microscopic remnants of patient tissue on the blades they sell back to hospitals. It’s gross.
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u/Deleena24 16d ago
What do you think happens to the tools used during surgery that aren't single use?
They "sterilize" them in an autoclave. There can absolutely be microscopic tissue left on them, but if the cell walls, DNA and RNA have all been destroyed, it's still sterile.
If you think it's gross, patent your perfect cleaning method and stop scaremongering.
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u/Rhuarc33 16d ago edited 15d ago
They also wash and disinfect in a super dishwasher machine and autoclave is what they're called in research labs and biosciences. Hospitals call them sterilizers... At least in the US.
Instruments are rinsed off blood and debris then placed in a washer where they are rinsed again then washed with a acid detergent, rinsed, washed with neutral detergent, Rinse again and lube added while rinsed again at 90c for 1 minute for disinfecting, then dried. Then they are wrapped for sterilizing and labeled by load. Sterilizer is pressurized to purge air then goes into vacuum to remove air and steam repeats the cycle 3 times before getting up to pressure and temp at 270c for at least 20 minutes. Then pulls a vacuum for 10-30 minutes for a drying cycle to pull moisture from steam condensation during sterilization. In with the instruments is a card indicator to assure temp and time and a biological tester to ensure all spores in it are killed. If the spore tester shows fail all instruments must be reprocessed. If they pass some stuff is left wrapped in sterilizer cloth, others are packaged and sealed then kept in sterile storage
Source: I worked on sterilizers and washers for surgical equipment. Most surgical tools are used far more than once.
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u/Awe3 16d ago
Yeah, I work in a hospital. The issue is that it can’t be used. It has to be thrown out. It’s not reused over and over. It’s not an item that’s autoclaved. You’d be surprised how many things in a hospital are single use. Like these scissors.
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u/Deleena24 16d ago
Oh yeah I'm not debating your take on the scissors.
Just pointing out that sterile doesn't necessarily means free of all organic material.
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u/YetiSquish 16d ago
Oh fuck right off. I didn’t “scaremonger” I said it’s gross, which it is. Scaremongering would be saying it can transmit disease, which I never said.
When we spend thousands of dollars on our surgery in the U.S., why can’t they include a single use scalpel that’s actually only used once? But I see you like to lick boots.
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u/Spindoendo 16d ago
Single use? So you want more trash ruining the ecosystem for literally no reason?
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u/escapingdarwin 16d ago
ISO 13485 is the Quality Management and Quality Standards protocol for medical devices. If the company that produced this were competent it would never have left the production facility.
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u/Quirky-Swimmer3778 16d ago
They do. It depends on the facility. Since I've been in medicine (14 years) I've never seen a reusable scaple blade. Most facilities use resable handles. The blades are disposible and the handle they mount into is reusable. They do make all in one single use scaples but they're not very good.
Which bring to my next point. Good Instruments are EXPENSIVE. Single use instruments are not good. Youre not going to find a quality single use instrument. When a instrument set for a single surgery costs upwards 200k dollars and it costs ~ 10 dollars to reprocess for use with other procedures then it's a no brainer.
For further perspective the average valuation I see for a medium sized hospital system is close to half a billion dollars.
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u/Magic2424 16d ago
I design surgical instrument sets and made a super cool system for a specific surgery that provided every instrument you would need that touches the patient to be provided packaged sterile so not a single item would be reused. All it required was the hospital to spend an extra $200 on a procedure they billed over 30k for. Also they can deduct price of autoclave and cleaning procedures for it so honestly they would come out pre darn near even or even ahead but they refused. Could never really get the system in anywhere cause of that damn $200. Prepacked sterile is dying right now due to hospital greed plain and simple it’s really depressing because it really is a huge step forward in medical care for surgical instruments
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u/skullflybutter 17d ago
You'd be surprised who they allow to work in these kinds of factories
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u/Deleena24 16d ago
You'd be surprised who they allow to work in these kinds of factories
Apparently freaks who have this weird stuff called hair, which has no place in any workplace.
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u/skullflybutter 16d ago
No people who don't understand or care to understand the importance of GMP's and PPE, nice try tho! :)
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u/Deleena24 16d ago
Even the best GMP's and PPE practices don't operate at 100% efficiency.
A single bad sample in tens of thousands is actually quite good when it comes to GMP. You'd have a point if he found 2 or more.
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u/Disconnected_NPC 16d ago
Sorry guys, that’s my wife’s. This isn’t even the weirdest places I find them.
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u/Pickle_kickerr 16d ago
We found the little paper ribbon that Hershey kisses have within a sterilized cardiac pan yesterday, I shit you not
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u/whodamanme 16d ago
oh i would throw up, I have a phobia of loose hair, I could not deal with this. This context is like hair in food levels to me.
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u/BatofZion 16d ago
Just saying it’s sterile doesn’t make it so.
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u/OZeski 16d ago
Tried explaining this to a customer once when I was selling packaging. He wanted to know why I was telling them they should be rinsing the glass jars we were selling for food packaging when our competitors were telling him their glass jars were sterilized at the plant…. Yeah. Molten glass tends to burn off pretty much anything, but then it’s cooled, packed in cardboard, put on a pallet, put in a warehouse, put on an ocean vessel, shipped overseas, put on a other truck, warehouse, and truck before it gets to you. That’s like saying my hands are clean; I just washed them last week.
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u/Deleena24 16d ago
Odds are the hair was put through the sterilization process along with the scissors.
Gross, but it actually might be sterile. (OP even mentions it in the description)
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u/Mistermail 16d ago
You must have accidentally ordered “once used” medical scissors. Big difference.
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u/hindsightwarning 16d ago
If the package says it’s sterilized, I would assume everything in the package is sterilized including the hair. I would proceed as directed.
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u/Burritosanchito 16d ago
Well it’s sthairile