Discoloured tools leads to more cancelled surgeries at Cambridge hospital
Cambridge Memorial Hospital (CMH) is cancelling more surgeries this week due to discoloured tools.
On Tuesday, CMH officials said 17 surgeries were cancelled after the technicians who disinfect, sterilize and reprocess its surgical instruments noticed a discolouration on the tools.
“It wasn’t all instruments. It was a certain number of instruments,” Stephanie Pearsall, vice president of clinical services and chief nursing executive at CMH, said Wednesday.
An additional 17 elective surgeries were cancelled on Wednesday and another 25 will be cancelled on Thursday, according to hospital staff.
Pearsall said the move is “to prioritize the instruments that were not discoloured for priority cases such as cancer or anything urgent or emergent.”
Pearsall said even though only elective surgeries were cancelled – it still impacts patients.
“While it may not be life-threatening it is a huge impact on patient's lives. They may have taken off work. They may be having some pain. They've waited for a long time for these surgical procedures. So we're very, very, very sensitive to that and committed to getting those patients rescheduled as quickly as we can,” said Pearsall.
DISCOLOURED TOOLS
Staff said they’re still in the process of testing their tools after the discolouration was noticed earlier this week.
“As soon as we noticed it [the discolouration], we removed the instruments. They did not go into the operating room,” Pearsall said on Tuesday.
Pearsall said here’s no chance any discoloured instruments were used in surgery.
An external party has been brought in to investigate the cause and second external party has been brought in to handle the reprocessing.
“We have instruments going in for testing at external labs. We have water that’s going in for testing. So that’s where we sit now,” she said on Wednesday.
The hospital plans to make a decision by Thursday afternoon on if they can resume elective surgeries on Friday.
“That is our goal,” Pearsall said.
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