Multicentre Trials for Decontamination of Fine‐Lumen PTFE Tubes Loaded with Bacterial Endospores by Low and Atmospheric Pressure Plasma

Abstract

Today more and more thermo‐labile medical devices are applied, which have to be decontaminated with low‐temperature sterilization methods. One method under development is the low‐temperature plasma. For the comparability of the antimicrobial efficacy of two low‐temperature plasma setups in fine‐lumen polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) tubes, independent of performer, round robin tests with Bacillus atrophaeus and Geobacillus stearothermophilus spores loaded with 0.3% BSA were done. All in all six test series were necessary to standardize the process and to achieve comparability, reproducibility, and microbiological variability. The results provide new evidence to the importance of standardization in microbiological investigations in terms of decontamination. This new tool is useable for established and new decontamination and sterilization equipment.

Transferred plasma jet as a tool to improve the wettability of inner surfaces of polymer tubes

“…[2][3][4] Recently, several works showed that atmospheric plasmas can be also used for this purpose. For example, decontamination of PTFE located on the inner tube surface was reported, [5] where the treated tube was used as a barrier dielectric in cylindrical DBD (one electrode was inserted inside the tube, while other was wired on its outer surface). Disadvantages of such system are rather complicated procedure to place electrode on the treated tube and exposure of operator to high voltage.…”

Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Penetration inside Flexible Polymeric Tubes

“…Such a DBD set‐up is however not so practical to treat tubes with different inner diameters since the construction to generate the plasma is incorporated on the tube outer surface itself. An alternative construction, like an APPJ, should therefore be used to enable a fast plasma modification of tubes with different inner diameters . Nevertheless, the number of fundamental research articles on inner tube surface modification by an APPJ is not very significant .…”

Different configurations of transferred atmospheric pressure plasma jet and their application to polymer treatment

“…For the last purpose, some devices that produce plasma jets at the end tip of long and flexible tubes have been developed. [ 6,10–25 ] Being that some of them use the plasma jet transfer technique, which is basically a secondary plasma jet formed away from a primary discharge that is generated inside a reactor or from a primary plasma jet. [ 6,15,17,24,26,27 ] One of the advantages of use the jet transfer technique in APPJ devices with long tubes is that the plasma jet is produced far from the high voltage source which improves the electrical safety in its operation and handling.…”