Editor's Note Movement in the OR is associated with microbial load, this study finds. Researchers determined areas in the OR with high and low numbers of people in transit and placed air samplers and settle plates in representative locations during 21 surgical procedures, in four ORs, during two seasons of…

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Improving teamwork between OR and sterile processing department (SPD) staff is an obvious way to increase the safety and efficiency of surgical procedures, but getting everyone on the same page can be challenging. Often the staff have limited understanding of what takes place in each respective department. Firsthand observation has…

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Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on March 9 issued warning letters to all three duodenoscope manufacturers for failing to comply with federal requirements to conduct postmarket surveillance studies to assess the effectiveness of reprocessing their devices. Olympus failed to start data collection, and Pentax and Fujifilm failed…

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Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), American Society for Microbiology, along with other experts on February 26 released voluntary standardized protocols for duodenoscope surveillance sampling and culturing, which update a 2015 CDC interim protocol. For facilities that choose to implement duodenoscope surveillance…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced on February 21 that users of the Center for Transforming Healthcare’s Targeted Solutions Tool (TST) for Hand Hygiene can now record their observations on any mobile device or tablet by downloading a mobile app from the Google Play or Apple app store. The mobile…

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The new year brings a newly updated Guideline for Manual Chemical High-Level Disinfection (formerly the Guideline for High-Level Disinfection). This AORN guideline, which is based on a comprehensive, systematic review of research- and non-research-based evidence, recommends best practices for safe and effective high-level disinfection (HLD) performed manually when automated methods…

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Editor's Note Infection risk with peripheral and epidural catheter use in continuous regional anesthesia increases over time, especially after 4 days, this study finds. Of 44,555 continuous regional anesthesia patients analyzed in this German study, the probability of infection-free catheter use decreased each day of peripheral and epidural catheter use.…

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Editor's Note Strictly enforcing a ban on skullcaps in the OR had no impact on surgical site infection (SSI) rates in this study, presented at the annual Academic Surgical Congress in Jacksonville, Florida. The analysis included American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) data on 1,901…

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Editor's Note A real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) sampling method for monitoring reprocessing of colonoscopes was successfully applied in this multicenter Italian study. PCR allowed identification of contaminated (59) and fully reprocessed (52) colonoscopes in 10 endoscopy units with high sensibility (98 %) and specificity (98%), within 3 to 4…

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Editor's Note The first exams have been scheduled for the recently launched new credential for infection preventionists in the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) setting−Certified Ambulatory Infection Preventionist (CAIP). The exam will be online at a testing center October 1-31, 2018. Electronic application must be submitted between August 1 and 31.…

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