The Management of Instruments and Technologies
摘要
Sterilization procedures represent one of the main and fundamental moments in the prevention and control of infections. Sterilization is the denaturation of proteins and nucleic acids and the degradation of membrane components and cell wall, causing the lethal alteration of some of their essential components. Sterilization is the final result of a process that must guarantee the condition in which the survival of microorganisms is highly unlikely: a surgical instrument is defined sterile if the safety level of sterility (SAL) is less than 10−6, that is, when the probability of finding a microorganism is less than one in a million and is established in the technical standard UNI EN 556–1. Till today in the health sector, for sterilization, reference has mostly been made to Legislative Decree 46/97, transposition of European legislation 43/98/CEE.