The main process of ultrasonic cleaning is around a lot of bubbles. Don’t get confused! Let me explain. These bubbles are created using ultrasonic sound waves which is used to clean the medical equipment.In other terms it is known as cavitation. (If you want to see cavitation in action, just turn the boat propeller in water and see the foam in water left behind).
How Does An Ultrasonic Cleaner Work?
During ultrasonic cleaning, you have to submerge the material to be cleaned into water, and high intensity, high-frequency waves are produced in water which then makes the submerged equipment get cleaned and let out all infection causing microorganism.
These sound waves are on a frequency that is more than what reaches the ear. The process takes place with the help of a transducer that produces high-frequency sound waves. These sound waves tear apart the liquid and cause cavitation. It created new water bubbles which expand and implode when they strike the contaminated surface, thus dislodging the contaminants
History Of Ultrasonic Cleaning
Ultrasonic cleaning started to come into use since the 1950s. Watch companies and dentists were the first to start using this technology in the 1970s.
The hospitals use this technique more so because it brings into use physical ways of cleaning, and there is minimum use for chemicals in this process which is hard to fathom, and therefore, the technology is costly. There are many kinds of ultrasonic cleaning machines and the one used for bacteria treatment works on transducer packs and a 40 kHz frequency.
Since ultrasonic cleaning is relatively newer in hospitals on a large scale, therefore, tests are going on about how equipment cleaned as such looks before and after the cleaning. The tests are done to figure out if ultrasonic cleaning works on bacteria as much as it works on dirt, grease, and grime.
It was seen that ultrasonic cleaning led to bacteria reduction of approximately 100%, and the exact bacterial reduction was up to 99.86% or up to 99.98% in two different tests. This was research done on equipment that had a colony of 1 million bacteria. This also led to cleaned bacteria which were immune to antibiotic medicines, hospital clothes can also be washed using ultrasonic cleaning, and a more than 99% cleaning was seen even when the most robust colonies of bacterial contamination were tested upon.
Starting from the ultrasonic dental cleaner, it is slowly emerged into the whole hospital today. Now ultrasonic carburetor cleaner, ultrasonic glasses cleaner are available in the hospitals.
One should know that ultrasonic cleaning is to be done in addition to regular brushing and not as an only means of purification. However, regular cleaning perhaps cannot reach threads, screws, and other smaller winding areas.
What Is The Primary Use Of Ultrasonic Cleaning
How clean the building materials, furnishings and the healthcare equipment are maintained should be taken care in mind when judging the quality of a hospital.
When one is getting the treatment done, it is a high possibility that the patient may catch acquired infections from the hospital. This directly relates to how hospitals would afford cleaning such that patients do not find infections, and patient’s health and even life does not directly get affected.
The patients are faced with the question of how to afford super specialty hospitals with cleaner environments and where doctors and paramedics both do their job well and care about the cleaning of medical equipment so that the patient’s life is not threatened. This is because many a patient come from the hospital with infections which they did not have when they went to the hospital. Between thousands and lakh patients complain of the same. Hope now you know how does an ultrasonic cleaner work and its essentials too.
This has another angle. Health professionals are also at grave risk from these hard microbes, and it could help the health professionals in a significant way if ultrasonic cleaning started happening in hospitals.
However, how effective is the ultrasonic cleaning depends as microbes, and microorganisms could be posing a threat of becoming immune to this cleaning as well, and that is a dead end because the costs are already very high. The microbes are killed in this cleaning physically and not chemically if someone were to ask the question.
Review Of Ultrasonic Cleaning By Health Professionals
Positive thing to note here is that when hospital authorities and health professionals were asked to rate this cleaning method and were asked if they would recommend this method of cleaning of the equipment, then a 100% positive response was seen.
Now, the same health officials, hospital owners, and health professionals also gave a list of what could be cleaned with the help of ultrasonic cleaning then it was found that the list has electric fans, commodes, chairs, tables, wheelchairs, trolleys, toys and sac bins on the list.
Surprisingly, it was found on that much more extensive equipment, and machinery can also be cleaned with ultrasonic cleaning.
Overall, it can be said that ultra sonic cleaning can have many uses in the medical, medicine and hospital industry. It reduces deaths caused by infections, personal suffering and financial loss that come from diseases that can be prevented.
Tips To Have The Equipment Remain Clean After Ultra Sonic Cleaning
- If immediate rinsing does not take place, it becomes essential to make sure that cleaning solutions do not deposit residues on equipment that needs to be cleaned.
- Make sure that rust, oxidation does not take place. Tarnish should not happen when the surface is not protected.
- When the equipment is clean after the ultrasonic cleaning, then it should be protected from dust as well.
- Oil should also not be allowed to form on the surface, and measures are to be taken to make sure that oil is not deposited or even created on the surface of the equipment.
From the medical equipment cleaning to commercial processes, ultrasonic cleaning is used extensively. It takes care of the killing microorganism and protect the medical equipment safely.
