Novel technology for automated cleaning of flexible endoscopes.

Abstract

Reprocessing of flexible endoscopes is a multi-stage system with many sequential stages. Errors in any one of the stages can result in microbial contamination that persists in patient ready endoscopes despite full reprocessing. One stage that is especially prone to errors is the manual cleaning of channels and exterior surfaces of flexible endoscopes. This editorial discusses the current factors in manual cleaning that lead to errors in cleaning adequacy. It also reviews novel technologies that provide improvements in cleaning of flexible endoscope channels.