The increasing attention directed
towards methods and ways to prevent epidemics and infections has brought about
new legislation to mandate the types of supplies that must be single use and
the types that can be sterilized. The law is very strict about what can and
cannot be reused in hospitals and many facilities do even more to improve
cleanliness by further broadening the range of disposable surgical supplies and
further reducing the range of the supplies that are reused.
Using disposable surgical supplies
is surely the best way to prevent infection outbreaks and the decision to
replace reusable supplies with disposable ones might also be motivated by cost
saving efforts, but the process does have a few cons as well. Single-use
supplies significantly increase the amount of waste generated by hospitals –
waste that can be recycled partially, but is often hazardous and needs to be
destroyed with special, usually very energy-intensive methods or.
As you probably see it by now, the
usage of disposable basic surgical instruments is a coin that has two faces: on the one
hand, it promotes the safety of the patients as well as of the hospital staff,
on the other hand, it increases the hospital’s environmental footprint.
