Contaminated equipment found in operating room

Contaminated surgical equipment has been found again at a B.C. Interior hospital, just two weeks after all non-emergency surgeries were cancelled in order to clean up the problem.

The contaminated equipment was found by operating room staff at the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops on Wednesday morning.        

As hospital staff prepared for an orthopedic surgery, they noticed a contaminated cement bottle on the surgical tray, according to chief of surgery Dr. Simon Treissman.

"Because of our recent experience, the surgical team was naturally very careful to check for these incidents of contamination. And it was decided because there was some cement on the outside of the cement container that the case could not proceed," said Treissman.

Orthopedic surgeons are especially wary of contaminated surgical tools, Treissman said.         

"Orthopedic surgeons use implants and it's necessary when a patient is receiving an implant that the level of sterility be at the highest possible quality. So no element of contamination is acceptable."

Last month Interior Health cancelled all non-emergency surgeries at the hospital for seven days while they did an internal and external review of hospital cleaning and sterilization practices after blood, bone and glue were found on supposedly sterilized surgical tools.

The health agency said the problem centred on the volume of instruments that needed to be cleaned and an audit of the hospital's sterilization procedures did not find any human error.

Dr. Richard McLeod, who first raised the issue of tainted instruments, said the problem goes back at least 18 months.

There's no word yet if Interior Health will suspend surgeries again at Royal Inland Hospital.