Reusing single-use medical devices, where are we standing now?

Abstract

Reprocessing single-use devices has attracted interest on the medical environment over the last decades. The reprocessing technique was sought in order to reduce the cost of purchasing the new medical device, which can achieve almost double of the price of the reprocessed product.This paper seeks to assay the situation of reprocessing single-use medical devices worldwide and used as methodology a literature review, aiming the reuse of medical devices that were firstly designed for single use only, but has become, more and more, effective on its reprocessing procedure. We also show the regulation, the countries worldwide which allows this procedure, the classification of these device and also the most important issue concerning the re-utilization of medical devices and different reprocessing process, minimizing the risk of gram positive and negative bacteria, avoid cross-contamination, Hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) virus, and also Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).