EndoSwab Helps Verify Cleanliness of Reusable Endoscopes

Endoscopes are hard to clean due to all the little crevices where pathogens can hide, and this has led to quite a bit of controversy in the last couple of years. While more attention has been bestowed on this problem, there’s still a lot of work left to do to improve cleaning procedures, as a recent study showed, so one can’t be fully confident that a reused endoscope is free of contaminants. Hygiena, a company based in Camarillo, California, is now releasing a product that helps to verify that a cleaning has been done properly and that an endoscope is ready to be disinfected and sterilized.

The EndoSwab is a catheter-like device that includes a 2.4 meter-long flexible shaft and a highly absorbent sponge at the tip. The tip is inserted into an endoscope and pushed through to make contact with as much of the internal surface as possible. Because of its narrow width and high flexibility, the EndoSwab helps to reach precisely those places where something may be hiding.

Once a sample is taken, it can then be run against Hygiena’s or another company’s adenosine triphosphate (ATP) test system. Since ATP is a component of all bodily fluids, the test verifies the cleanliness, but not the sterility of the endoscope. Following a green light from the ATP test, the person cleaning the endoscope knows that bodily fluids will not be present to help protect any bacteria lurking within the nooks of the device.

More from Hygiena:

EndoSwab is compatible with Hygiena’s UltraSnap and SuperSnap ATP surface tests, two fully integrated, easy-to-use and environmentally-friendly systems capable of generating highly sensitive, accurate and reproducible results in the EnSURE luminometer. Surface swabs are also used to verify the cleanliness and decontamination of the hand controls and distal end of the endoscope. Similarly, AquaSnap can be used on the same system to verify water quality. The systems also incorporate Hygiena’s SureTrend software package for the easy recording of test data and tracking of results. These data can be used to generate graphs and reports that detect cleaning issues, identify personnel training needs and monitor the overall cleanliness of an instrument inventory over time.