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posted by martyb on Thursday March 01 2018, @11:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the Oh-shit dept.

Colon and rectal surgeon Sanjiv Patankar allegedly washed and reused catheters that are inserted into patients' rectum during medical procedures. The instruments, which are used to examine patients with fecal incontinence, constipation, and other possible disorders, are supposed to be thrown away after a single use.

Patankar, who practiced in East Brunswick, [New Jersey] allegedly instructed medical assistants to wash the instruments in soapy water after use, soak them in bleach solutions, and then rinse before air-drying them. The doctor also reportedly ordered to continue using a catheter that has started to break down due to overbleaching.

In a hearing conducted Dec. 19, the state said that documented evidence appears to show that between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, Patankar's office performed 82 procedures but only five catheters were used over that period.

Source: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/217801/20171230/doctor-accused-of-reusing-one-use-anal-catheters-on-multiple-patients.htm


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday March 01 2018, @10:03PM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 01 2018, @10:03PM (#646033) Journal

    I understand that it's a balance, and not only that, but a balance designed to reduce not only costs but injuries and deaths. But playing devil's advocate for a moment...

    waste time sterilizing

    Isn't this time, and more, now spent manufacturing hundreds of thousands of medical devices to replace a single device that previously would have been used repeatedly throughout a long service life, and also spent managing and maintaining ever-larger landfills to contain an ever-larger percentage of waste now deemed "disposable" instead of "durable"?

    you don't need a big department of sterilization so you reduce costs

    You reduce costs by buying an item 5,000 times instead of once?

    you have to buy many times [so] disposable elements much be cheap to balance the cost of sterilizing

    I submit that each iteration of each device would have been made more and more cheaply, anyway, regardless of whether it was intended for multiple or single use.

    you reduce cross-contamination risk to 0%

    There remain a staggering number of vectors for cross-contamination (same person touches two devices, two devices touch same surface, etc.) even after you start printing "Use This Thing Only Once" on the packaging. For a case in point, consider the story you're commenting on.

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