APSIC Guidelines Updates on Sterilisation and Disinfection

WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases Surveillance and Control, School of Public Health, the University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong SAR China

The Asia Pacific Society of Infection Control (APSIC) launched its revised Guidelines for Disinfection and Sterilization of Instruments in Health Care Facilities in 2017. This document highlighted practical recommendations in a concise format to assist healthcare facilities at Asia Pacific region in achieving high standards in sterilization and disinfection.

Recommendations include centralization of reprocessing in Central Sterile Supply Department (CSSD), training of all staff with annual competency assessment, verification of cleaning, continual monitoring of reprocessing procedures to ensure their quality and a corporate

strategy for dealing with single-use medical devices. The CSSD should be divided into at least three areas: cleaning, packaging, and sterilization and storage. Detailed recommendations are also given with respect to reprocessing of endoscopes and the enhanced reprocessing of duodenoscopes.

Sterilization facilities should aim for excellence in practices as this is part of patient safety. The guidelines come with a checklist help service providers to identify gaps for improvement to reach this goal describes the guidelines and recommendations for the reprocessing of instruments in healthcare setting.

Updates of the present guideline will be done as latest evidence are available, such as finetuning the Spaulding’s Classification to include duodenoscopes, bronchoscopes and cystoscopes to the critical use level due to the availability of new models’ scopes that tolerate low temperature chemical sterilizer such as Hydrogen Peroxide Gas Plasma. Also, considerations around manufacturers’ instructions for use (MIFUs), high level disinfections (HLD) of lumened and non-lumened devices, processing of reusable medical devices used with lubricating or defoaming agents, monitoring for effectiveness of processing, handling of devices after HLD, augments and alternatives to HLD, processing of investigational devices, tracking of reusable medical devices, and approaches to implementation.