Steam quality monitoring as a strategy to reduce wet packs and sterilization failure.

Background: Hospital articles processed by steam are widely used in the Central Sterile Supply Department (CSSD), responsible for due sterilization. Steam sterilization is discussed worldwide, aiming to protect patients. If steam is outside the specified requirements, the sterilization process may fail, resulting in the wet packs at the end of the sterilization cycle.

Analysis of water quality over non-condensable gases concentration on steam used for sterilization.

Background: Non-condensable gases (NCGs) are all gases that do not undergo liquefaction during the saturated steam sterilization process. During a sterilization cycle, the NCGs presence inside the chamber is one of the biggest threats to the sterilization process compromising process validation and product quality.

Methods: In this work, 170 testing of NCGs concentrations performed between September 2016 and August 2021 were carried out by Orionce Serviços de Metrologia Ltda (Barueri, SP, Brazil), according to EN285:2015 procedure.