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World J Exp Med. Feb 20, 2015; 5(1): 33-39
Published online Feb 20, 2015. doi: 10.5493/wjem.v5.i1.33
High-level disinfection of gastrointestinal endoscope reprocessing
King-Wah Chiu, Lung-Sheng Lu, Shue-Shian Chiou
King-Wah Chiu, Lung-Sheng Lu, Shue-Shian Chiou, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Kaohsiung 833, Taiwan
King-Wah Chiu, Lung-Sheng Lu, Shue-Shian Chiou, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Kaohsiung 833, Taiwan
Author contributions: Chiu KW and Lu LS contributed equally to this work; Chiu KW, Lu LS and Chiou SS designed the research; Chiu KW and Lu LS performed the research; Chiu KW and Chiou SS analyzed the data; and Chiu KW, Lu LS and Chiou SS wrote the paper.
Supported by:The gastrointestinal endoscopy unit of Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taiwan.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: King-Wah Chiu, MD, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, 123 Ta-Pei Road, Niao-Sung, Kaohsiung 833, Taiwan. kwchu@adm.cgmh.org.tw
Telephone: +886-7-7317123 Fax: +886-7-7336856
Received: August 4, 2014
Peer-review started: August 6, 2014
First decision: September 16, 2014
Revised: September 19, 2014
Accepted: November 17, 2014
Article in press: November 19, 2014
Published online: February 20, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: High-level decontamination processes to ensure iatrogenic infection prevention in the delivery of high-quality gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy services are essential. There are three important steps that must be highlighted: manual washing, automated endoscope washer reprocessing and adequate drying/storage after rinsing. Our experimental data demonstrated that surveillance culture monitoring that can detect unsuccessful decontamination provides a much greater assurance of quality control for high level disinfection. This monitoring should be taken into account in order to ensure safety when a patient receives GI endoscope service. Randomized surveillance culture monitoring of the reprocessing process in each month is important for quality control and in ensuring patients’ safety.