CDC drafts new guideline for CJD on instruments

CDC drafts new guideline for CJD on instruments

ICPs have until June 14 to comment

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued new draft guidelines for sterilization and disinfection that include recommendations on processing equipment contaminated with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Infection control professionals have until June 14, 2002, to comment on the Draft Guideline for Disinfection and Sterilization in Healthcare Facilities, 2003. The guideline is designed to replace the old sterilization and disinfection section in the 1985 CDC Guideline for Handwashing and Hospital Environmental Control.

In doing so, the CDC addresses chemical disinfectants recommended for patient-care equipment. They include alcohol, glutaraldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, iodophors, orthophthalaldehyde, peracetic acid, phenolics, quaternary ammonium compounds, and sodium hypochlorite. Sterilization methods discussed include steam sterilization, ethylene oxide, hydrogen peroxide gas plasma, and liquid peracetic acid. Part 2 of the document provides consensus recommendations of the CDC Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee for the practice of disinfection and sterilization in health care settings.

Of particular interest is the detailed guidance for dealing with CJD, which can be spread from patient to patient on surgical instruments. Rare but recurrent, the traditional "sporadic" form of CJD occurs throughout the world. It is a rapidly progressive, invariably fatal neurodegenerative disorder that is assumed to be caused by abnormal prion proteins. The estimated annual incidence in the United States is about one case per 1 million people. The vast majority of CJD patients usually die within one year of illness onset. Iaterogenic (provider-to-patient) transmission of CJD has been reported in more than 250 patients worldwide, the CDC says. The situation has been complicated by the emergence of a new variant CJD, which appears in people who consumed animals infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) — mad cow disease.

[Editor’s note: Requests for copies of the Draft Guideline for Disinfection and Sterilization in Healthcare Facilities, 2003 can be sent to the Resource Center, Attention: DSGuide, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, CDC, Mailstop E-68, 1600 Clifton Road N.E., Atlanta, GA 30333. Fax: (404) 498-1244. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site: www.cdc.gov/ncidod/hip/dsguide.htm. Comments on the draft can be sent to the Resource Center, Attention: DSGuide, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, CDC, Mailstop E-68, 1600 Clifton Road N.E., Atlanta, GA 30333. Fax: (404) 498-1244. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site: www.cdc.gov/ncidod/hip/dsguide.htm.]