Euronda Pro System autoclaves with Covid-19 Control

Additional protection for your practice, sterilisation room and operators

The recent Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted the need to protect operators, doctors and patients. Being an area in which we are constantly handling potentially infected equipment that must be made sterile, the sterilisation room is a high-risk setting. During this process, which begins with the cleaning of instruments, bioaerosols (when washing mechanically with ultrasonic tanks) and air flows are created, which can compromise the safety of personnel working in the sterilisation room. The autoclave is the medical device that ensures the completion of the sterilisation process yet due to their very nature, they can become contaminated before a cycle is complete.

Autoclaves and safety of surrounding environment

To understand the link between autoclaves and air quality, we need to know how they work.

The first step of a type-B sterilisation cycle – i.e. suitable for sterilising hollow objects – involves removing air from the chamber. This must be done to ensure that steam is able to penetrate handpieces, turbines and tubes. Only by creating vacuum, after air is removed from the chamber, can we ensure that steam will penetrate hollow objects. However, this crucial step may conceal some pitfalls. Before a cycle is carried out, the contents of your autoclave have not yet been sterilised, so there may be droplets contaminated with pathogenic micro-organisms on the surface of objects inside.

We must therefore assume that untreated air released from the autoclave into the surrounding environment may contain these pathogenic substances and may compromise the safety of the area.

The Covid-19 Control: what is it and how does it work

For top-of-the-range autoclaves from the Euronda Pro System line (E10, E9 and EXL), a free firmware update has been developed, and is available for all new autoclaves and ones currently in use.

The latest firmware version introduces a brand new function: Covid-19 control to be activated under password in service 1. This is a pre-treatment before each cycle to dry the pouches and mitigate the risk of contagion.

It is based on the knowledge that the permanence of the virus on surfaces depends on the integrity of the droplets of saliva on the surfaces. According to the latest studies *, once the saliva droplets have evaporated, the virus dies within two minutes.

Now, you can run our new Covid-19 Control pre-cycle: this cycle allows you to dry out droplets, significantly reducing the risk of infection related to air expelled from the autoclave chamber.

The Covid-19 Control eliminates moisture containing pathogenic micro-organisms, rendering them harmless, by heating the autoclave chamber to 90° for 10 minutes before the sterilization cycle begins. As a result, the risk of staff members tasked with sterilizing equipment being exposed to potentially dangerous viruses is minimised.

With the creation of this pre-cycle for Euronda Pro System autoclaves, we have eliminated a risk factor within clinics by ensuring that air expelled from autoclaves during the pre-vacuum phase cannot adversely affect the safety of the surrounding environment.

The Covid-19 Control increases levels of protection in the workplace by improving safety for operators, doctors and patients.

The E8 autoclaves are now also natively equipped with the Covid-19 control function.

* Chin A.W. H., et al. Stability of SARS-CoV-2 in different environmental conditions The Lancet Microbe DOI: https: //doi.org/10.1016/S2666-5247 (20) 30003-3) April 2, 2020 which was also taken up by ISS in the COVID 25 report / 2020.