Pentax ECY-1575K [76/80] 2 care and maintenance tips

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5-2. Care and Maintenance Tips

Flexible endoscopes have been an invaluable tool in the medical community’s

armamentarium to successfully diagnose and treat a wide variety of illnesses in patients for

several decades. Perhaps due to their longevity and progressive design changes over the years

which have simplied their use, exible endoscopes have been somewhat taken for granted

and have erroneously not been considered highly technological medical devices.

In fact, current generation flexible endoscopes although easier to clinically use, are much

more sophisticated than ever. Special reprocessing instructions must be followed to ensure

the instruments are patient ready and patient safe. Special care and handling must be

exercised and practiced to prevent instrument malfunction and prolong the reliability of the

endoscope.

The burden of responsibility to ensure safe and reliably functioning instruments is left

in the hands of the health care professionals who actually care for and reprocess flexible

endoscopes.

Naturally, equipment manufacturers share in this responsibility and tremendous efforts have

been made in designing instruments which could be reprocessed and maintained as easy as

possible. However, due to the nature of their use and application, exible endoscopes must be

subjected to special cleaning procedures, followed by a disinfection or sterilization process

after each and every patient use.

To highlight and simplify, what may appear to some as being complicated maintenance and

reprocessing instructions, PENTAX strongly recommends the users review the following

suggestions and advice on the care and maintenance of your PENTAX exible endoscopes.

These tips, particularly those involving endoscope reprocessing should not be construed

as “shortcuts” and are not intended as substitute directions for complete instructions found

elsewhere in the manual.

• Avoid soaking of the endoscope with accessories such as forceps or any sharp

edged objects which could inadvertently scratch or cut the distal bending section

sheath. (Subsequent exing back and forth of the rubber sheath could eventually

stretch the scratched rubber until a pinhole and leak develops.)

• Exposure to a compatible cleaning detergent is essential to thorough cleaning of

all surfaces of the endoscope. Rinsing and drying after cleaning is imperative to

prevent dilution and/or adulteration of the disinfectant/sterilant.

• Not all manufacturers of Automated Endoscope Reprocessors (AERs/WDs)

make specific claims nor provide special instructions for reprocessing all of

the removable endoscope components that are integral to the safe and effective

operation of exible endoscopes. Therefore, should the AER/WD manufacturer’s

instructions not specifically address reprocessing of any particular endoscope

component (suction valve, inlet seal, etc.) in the AER/WD, then those components

must be reprocessed manually as described in PENTAX instructions/labeling. Prior

to use, check with each AER/WD manufacturer as to their specific claims with

respect to reprocessing individual endoscope components.

• Do not reuse disposable endoscopic accessory instruments (EAIs) or endoscope

components intended for single patient or one time use.