Endoscope
So, you’ve heard about endoscopy surgery! It’s the greatest thing… but let’s start from the beginning. What’s an endoscope?
Definition:
An Endoscope is a piece of health equipment which has a lengthy tube. This tube is used by medical doctors to scrutinize the internal parts of a person’s body to identify the problem before they can commence treatment.
The equipment consists of a video camera and provides illumination for the internal body parts to be seen on a screen as the procedure is taking place.
This equipment, like all valuable tools is not a cheap product and should be handled with caution and maintained often to provide optimal service. There are various types of this equipment and they have specific names as outlined below:
• Arthroscopes: used to check a person’s joints
• Bronchoscopes: used for checking the lungs and air passages in a person
• Colonoscopes: used to check the colon
• Cystoscope: used to scan the urinary bladder
• Gastroscope: used for checking a person’s stomach, the throat and small intestines
• Hysteroscope: used to check the uterus of a woman
Hope this helps… it’ll give you the basic knowledge of what an endoscope is and what is used for.
Maintenance of an Endoscope
Endoscopes are great tools that have to be well maintained! Therefore we’ve put together a list of maintenance tips below:
Ways of Ensuring Proper Maintenance of Endoscope Devices
1. Handling of endoscope devices should not be left to several people. Appointed senior staff in the department should be charged with this responsibility. They must be accountable and ensure that cleanliness and maintenance of these gadgets takes place as required. The beauty of having more than one person is check is usually for total quality management.
2. Administers of these tools must undergo basic training on maintenance and cleaning effectively handle them. This would not only save on repair costs but would ensure that optimum performance of the tools at all times and stretched lifetime. Product Manuals are essential but should not be relied upon by users as the only source of information on maintenance.
Attendance at conferences and other Continuous Medical Education (CMEs) sessions on safeguarding should be part of the training. This would not only enhance networking with other users, but they would learn from each other’s experiences. It may be costly to get this information initially, but the returns would be astronomical in the long run.
These are 4 Simple Tips on Effective Handling of Endoscope Equipment
• Ensure that only responsible and proactive people are in charge of the endoscope tools. These should be repaired immediately after the identification of outflows, blocked tools, failure of a leak test or any other problems that may lead to wrong diagnosis.
• Sterilization can be done in stages from low, to middle and finally high levels to ensure that the gadgets are cleaned to the highest standards. For bendable tools this must be done thoroughly to remove particles that may be left behind after use. Deep sterilization of more than eight stages should be part of the process and the clinic can decide when to do it.
• Users must not wait for gadgets to break down before precautionary measures with reputable companies or manufacturers are undertaken and should be done regularly.
• Internal inspection of equipment from repair firms must be conducted internally to avoid full reliance on external sources because any human being can make an error. Experienced technicians who are conversant with the gadgets and understands their use to recognize sub standard repairs should be charged with this responsibility.
In conclusion we can say that maintenance of endoscope devices is the responsibility of all who handle the tools at all levels from the manufacturer to the final user.