Reuse of angiography devices: A challenge in health care centers

The purpose of this review of article is to assess the reuse of angioplasty devices as a challenge to the health center. Processing and reuse of disposable medical products began in the United States in 1970. Nowadays, infection is one of the common post-operative complications which have different severities and types based on social, financial and cultural conditions in different countries. Ignoring the proper disinfection and sterilization of hospital devices and equipment is one of the most important sources for distribution and transmission of nosocomial infections. The papers from 1998 to 2013 were searched for based on the key words "Reuse", "Single Use Only", "Disposable", "Medical Equipment", and "Reuse of Single Used Devices (SUD)" (alone or in combination) in Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Scopus, Medline, EMBASE, and PsycINFO. The main problems in reusing angiography devices include the failure in cleaning, disinfection and sterilization of equipment due to structure design, lack of knowledge and not providing information to patients and families regarding to reuse of disposable devices, unclear cost for the equipment, ambiguous disinfection and sterilization techniques for disposable medical equipment due to lack of proper staff supervision, lack of informed consent for reusing equipment, contradiction to the principles of clinical governance, patient safety, JCI standardization, and negligence of the ethical issues of patient care. According to the lack of efficient reprocessing the angiography devices in country, lack of official license and policies issued by Ministry of Health and the Center of Medical Equipment, and the above mentioned risks, the reuse of these devices is not recommended.