Maintenance disinfection of HDF equipment

[Garry]

We currently have a mix of equipment both HDF and non HDF but are moving towards all HDF as our replacement process moves along.  With the current split we have we are able to keep all of the HDF equipment in use with spare capacity being standard dialysis equipment rotated in our equipment store.

Are there any units that are exclusively HDF, or have clean dialysate filters, who could share how they manage the disinfection of this equipment when not in general use?  I'm assuming there has to be a weekly rotation and disinfection to keep the filters valid?  

Satellite units are fine as, with only a few spares, this is easily managed.  I can foresee the issue being with our main unit where we hold more spares as a buffer for isolation/home dialysis

Cheers

[fraser gilmour]

Hi Garry,
We are full HDF in Dorset and have been able to specify our facilities so that all machines are permanently connected in standby. In our outpatient centres all machines are set to automatically start each day to run a thermal disinfection with citric, unless they are in use, in which case manual hot citric disinfection is performed post treatment. Once a week they come on and draw hot water out of the loop overnight to sanitise the connection pipework and inlet parts.
There is no real evidence or manufacturer instructions to say this must be the case, it just seems like a good idea to be proactive in this respect when using equipment that produces fluid for infusion.
Operators manuals for both our equipment types are a bit vague, with the only stated requirements in the 5008 manual being mandatory disinfection post treatment and disinfection required after downtime of more than 72 hours.
The 5008 has a timer for filter change but its around 100 days, so going by the operators manual theoretically you could leave a machine for 99 days after filter change, start up run a disinfection and you are good to go.
Maybe this would be good enough, and the quality of the infusion fluid would be acceptable, I've never tried it and probably never will

Fraser  

[Garry]

Hi Fraser,

Cheers for the response.  After posting I found reference in our Braun user manual to disinfecting HDF equipment weekly when in storage so guess it won't be that onerous once we get to that situation.  Probably still a few years off looking at our lifecycle plan for out standard dialysis equipment.

 

[Ian Wilde]

Hi Garry, we too are all HDF but unlike Fraser we don't have enough points for machines by some way!

We are all 5008 machines and have the 72 hour warning set for disinfection if the machine is plugged in.

If we find a machine that has been out of action for over a week we tend to give it a sporotal disinfection and then continue as normal.

If the water inside the machine was pure/ultrapure to start with then nothing should have grown in there anyway within a week at least?

Some of our pool of home machines may be in storage for more than a month or two.  We tend to sporotal, change the diasafes, the mandatory heat and then carry on as normal.