Endoscopes are the pieces of equipment utilised when carrying out an endoscopy; looking inside the body to examine hollow areas such organs or tracts. Due to the invasive nature of the procedure, endoscopes must be thoroughly pre-cleaned, manually cleaned and rinsed before being used again.
Automatic endoscope reprocessors (AERs) achieve this by mixing filtered water with disinfectants and detergents to sanitise the endoscope. They are typically used to separate two distinct areas, one side being where you place the equipment ready for decontamination, and the other for clean equipment storage, to avoid any cross contamination.
Water used within an AER needs to be cleared down of all bacteria, meaning decreasing stages of particle filtration are used down to a final 0.2 micron rated cartridge. This will collect the bacteria within the water, ready to begin the reprocessing cycle.
