Advanced Instrument Processing Solutions

First, you need to lower the temperature on your wash cycle to the optimum high point of your detergent. Most of the enzymes in an enzymatic detergent will begin to denature over 145°F.

Let’s explore a few scenarios where your washer was set previously to a higher temperature:

1. If your wash cycle was set at a temperature over 160°F, it was probably set up for an alkaline detergent which work best at higher temperatures. 
2. If you were previously using another enzymatic detergent at a high temperature and experiencing poor results, these high wash temperatures would most likely be the cause. 
3. If you were using a two detergent system, your wash cycle would only work properly at the higher temperature if you were following the enzymatic detergent wash by an alkaline one. Following the enzyme wash cycle with a plain neutral pH detergent wash cycle at that high of a temperature, would have just been cooking any leftover soil onto your instruments.

With the aforementioned in mind, if you don’t know how to change the temperature on your washer, please have your service tech come in and show you how! All too often, I encounter facilities where no one knows how to adjust the parameters on their washer. This is a very important piece of “know how.” For example, if you’re testing your washer’s cleaning efficacy according to AAMI recommendations, and it appears you are not using enough chemistry to do the job, how are you going to adjust the dosing if you don’t know how to? Don’t become dependent on your service tech for these minor adjustments—a service call takes time, and it’s down time you can’t afford. Besides, learning how to adjust your machine will ensure you are in control in following recommendations and optimizing your cleaning ability.

Furthermore, if you work at a larger facility with a number of shifts, it’s my belief that at least one person on every shift should know the codes to change the parameters. You wouldn’t own a car without knowing how to put gas in it or an oven that only ran at one temperature, right? And you probably know how to change the parameters on your sterilizer for those “wonderful” extended cycles… so why wouldn’t you know how to do the same with your washers?

I know… I went off on a tangent again… but I hope I answered your question and wish you all a wonderful holiday!

Detergents consist of chemistries that work together to break down soil in concert with water. One of the most important groups of these chemistries are known as Surfactants (surface acting agents). Surfactants help make water “wetter,” lift soil from surfaces, and keep the soil suspended in water so that it will not re-deposit on surfaces. One of the drawbacks of surfactants, however, is the foam they produce. Foam is fine in a bathtub or kitchen sink, but in reality, foam is essentially bubbles of air suspended in liquid. You know as well as I do that we are not cleaning with air, but rather, we are cleaning with water. Foam is difficult to rinse and leads to additional water consumption. Furthermore, foam is a real problem in the washer-disinfector (WD), whereby it can damage pumps, impair measurements, and cause heating elements to burn out.

De-foaming agents suppress the foam in detergents and are usually recruited from a group of surfactants called “cloud-point surfactants.” These cloud-point surfactants can produce foam just like any other surfactant until they are brought to a certain temperature. Once that temperature is reached, they become less soluble in water, and the water they are in becomes cloudy; hence, the name “cloud-point surfactants.”

POWER ZYME™ contains these “cloud-point” surfactants. When added to the manual soak, or if you have a heated ultrasonic cleaner, you will notice that once the water temperature reaches 95°F (35°C) and beyond, it will begin to cloud. If you were to place this warmed, cloudy solution in a bottle and shake it, you would see very little foam–and any foam that did form would soon dissipate. This is why POWER ZYME™ optimizes the wash cycle in your washer-disinfector, and why we at Potomac Labs recommend dosing POWER ZYME™ once “cloud-point” temperature is reached in the washer.

The best water temperature for cleaning instruments is dependent on a few variables:

• Where in the cleaning process the instruments are
• The type of cleaning chemistry used (Enzymatic vs. Alkaline)
• The IFU of the cleaning chemistry manufacturer
• The cleaning instructions of the instrument manufacturer

Instruments that are soiled should initially be rinsed with room to body temperature water (75°-95°F/24°-35°C). Since proteins begin to denature above 113°F (45°C), rinsing instruments with water above this temperature would denature these proteins onto the surface of the instrument (similar to cooking a chicken breast in an steel frying pan with no oil). It is also advisable that your washer/disinfector have an initial cooler pre-wash cycle to help remove any proteinaceuos soil from instruments that may have re-deposited during manual or ultrasonic cleaning.

Enzymatic cleaners generally work best in warm water (100°-140°F/38°-60°C). Cooler water temperature makes enzymes sluggish; conversely, water that is too hot denatures them. Incidentally, POWER ZYME’s™ optimal cleaning temperature range is up to 104°F/40°C for manual and ultrasonic cleaning, and between 113°-131°F/45°-55°C in the washer/disinfector, saving you energy.

The lower effective temperatures of enzymatic cleaners make them an excellent choice for manual, ultrasonic and washer/disinfector cleaning modalities.

Alkaline cleaners work best at higher temperatures than Enzymatics (above 140°F/60°C). In fact, at lower temperatures Alkalines will denature soils on surfaces. The higher temperature needs, combined with their caustic nature, limit Alkalines suitable for use only in washer disinfectors.

Lastly, if there are any specific requirements from the instrument manufacturer regarding water temperature, these must also be followed.