Cleaning Compounds and Chemicals
Re-cleaning Medical Device Vendor Parts
Q. Current procedure calls for an ultrasonic bath at 69°C for 20 mins with Liquinox and DI water. Then calls for another such DI bath at 69°C with NO detergent for 20 mins. Then a 1 min DI water flushing. Is this overkill? Is Liquinox appropriate? When I clean the parts, they have already been cleaned by vendor in the exact same manner, essentially I re-clean them.
A. Thanks for your question. When in doubt, you obviously want to lean more on the side of doing to much cleaning rather than too little. However, we would suggest this is a slightly overkill procedure. We do not consider it unusual to re-clean a medical device part that has been cleaned by a vendor. It is very important to be sure the parts are cleaned and is a good risk mitigation practice to do your own additional cleaning. Among other control parameters, this will control any contamination that may have happened in transit. The part that is slightly overkill is the time and temperature.
In general, for medical device cleaning, a temperature of 60 deg C for 10 minutes is fairly typical. It is certainly not wrong to clean at 60 deg C and 20 minutes, just slightly overkill. The two part rinsing and the rinse at the same temperature as cleaning is recommended and typical. Recall that an initial rinse at a lower temperature than the wash risks breaking the emulsions that may have formed and may redeposit the residue you are removing.
Liquinox™ Critical Cleaning Liquid Detergent is an excellent, high foaming manual cleaner for organic residue removal. If these parts are exposed to bodily fluids or other proteinaceous residues, we would recommend Tergazyme™ Enzyme-Active Powdered Detergent. It is a powerful organic residue remove in concert with proteolytic enzymes.
You can also request a free sample of Liquinox, Tergazyme or any Alconox Inc. detergent by completing the questionnaire at Get Sample.
