Given that the vials are what gives the vacutainer the ‘vacu’ part, they are under a vacuum, one would hope that the chance of catching anything would be slight, depending on use but could possibly taint the sample. I was rather curious how blood could end up on the inside of the vacutainer but if one were to pull the vial off while the vial was sucking the blood out, it could leak due to the velocity of the blood at the time of removal of the vial.

I wasn’t panicked but rather curious how it would yield a ‘clean’ sample if there was still a small amount of blood still in the carrier.

On to dentists, in a rather high area of HIV contamination my dentist reveled that he used older style all metal drills heads because the plastic ones wore out too fast. He autoclaved everything and used a chemical rinse too and thought that everything was being done. Then I herd that his practice was hit by a lawsuit alleging that his tubing in his dentist stands wasn’t cleaned or replaced in like forever. Nice I thought. I switched dentists after that…

Considering that the Vacutainer was routinely used for collecting blood cultures, they HAD to be completely a completely aseptic closed system.

Maybe the design and usage capabilities has changed since I ‘retired”? The only manual needles or butterflies had no threads; they just came out of their package and popped directly onto a syringe…so I’m at a loss as to how any blood would have been inside the tip of the holder to start with.

You have a double-ended needle covered by 2 plastic sheaths and sealed. You unscrew the back end, then screw that into the holder. The other needle is only uncapped just prior to penetrating the cleansed skin. So the holder part Pinky mentions is a good 3/4″ or more, depending on the size of the needle, from the actual opening of the needle (either end).

The needle’s “backend” was covered with a sheath of rubber that only came out of its sheath and pierced the vacuum-sealed tube when enough pressure was applied. As one took off the filled tube and put on another, the sheath came back down over the end of the needle, preventing blood from coming out.

So how there was ANY blood in the holder is a mystery to me, and I worked with those from 1983 to 1997 (was a lab tech with lots of phlebotomy duties, including teaching new students using my own arm for them to train upon). NEVER had one leak. Plus, Vacutainer holders were extremely inexpensive, so one could toss them whenever they wanted to; hell, we used to buy them 500 to a bag and replace worn ones as needed.

But… it is possible that the nurses were somehow using their supplies incorrectly??

Considering that the Vacutainer system was used for blood cultures,

Many years ago, doctors didn’t wash their hands between patients. Shall we return to those days?

You may want to look up a few basic diseases like “hepatitis,” “AIDS” and “drug-resistant staph” before you wonder why we spend so much time sterilizing things and think that single-use items are better when you’re dealing with blood.

I mentioned during a blood draw when I did a drug research test that the vacutainer needle carriers looked like they nearly always had a small amount of blood in them near where the needle locks into the carrier. Well the nurse (don’t think she was a phlebotomist) thought it was odd that I’s note that. She thought that the small amount wouldn’t infect anyone but I mentioned the chance that a sample could be contaminated with what ever might be in those little drops of blood. She thought about it for a few seconds and shrugged.

Dentists are where people should focus their efforts in safe reusable medical products. Drills and polishers and suction and the various picks and scrappers could very well sicken hundreds. And then the air and water hoses in their equipment. The fungus and mold potential is probably high. Yikes…

While prions are certainly quite resistant to conventional sterilisation techniques, the statement “no sterilization technique can guarantee to eradicate prions” is grossly overstated and factually incorrect.

The current WHO guidelines detail three different methods which reliably denature any type of protein, and any of these methods are suitable for use on surgical equipment intended to be sterilised by conventional means (loosely, “steel things that can be safely boiled in an autoclave”).

In addition, the infectious path of prions (and indeed their basic nature) is still poorly understood and the subject of much research, but the general consensus is that initial infection is through the oral ingestion of an infectious agent, not through external exposure such as a speculum.

On top of that, what about the people who end up working with these medically contaminated materials to be recycled? Is this done in third-world countries with little or no regulation and a desperate, deliberately undereducated workforce?

On the other hand, my father had a $12,000 pacemaker implanted (and that $12,000 was in 1992 dollars) and then he died two days later. I found out later they might have recycled it — if we’d specifically asked and paid to have it removed. The waste and cost can be ridiculous.

There are two pretty ugly sides to this story.

Is there any side to American healthcare that isn’t ugly?