The Tribune

By MORGAN ADDERLEY

Tribune Staff Reporter

madderley@tribunemedia.net

TWO procedures at Princess Margaret Hospital had to be cancelled last week when the hospital’s two functioning autoclave machines temporarily ceased to function, Health Minister Dr Duane Sands said Friday.

However, Dr Sands said both machines, which are used to sterilize equipment, were repaired within 24 hours. He added all other cases were carried out with the assistance of machines from Doctor’s Hospital.

Dr Sands was contacted by the Tribune on Friday and asked to respond to reports that the autoclave machines were down.

The health minister explained the hospital has three, one of which has been in disrepair for a while. The other two, which are located in the Critical Care Block, were working until midweek. One had a leakage issue while another was not heating optimally due to “damage from recent power outages”, Dr Sands added.

Both machines were back on line by Thursday.

“The problem was detected day before yesterday (Wednesday),” Dr Sands said. “So there’s one machine that has been down for a long time. Not sure whether that is even reparable.

“You have two that were basically providing all the service. And then they lost one and then another in very short order. So overnight – going from two days ago into yesterday (Thursday), they would have had a problem.

“The problem was rectified by early afternoon yesterday, and then the second machine was brought on line later in the afternoon. So by (Thursday) afternoon at about 24-hours you had full capacity restored.”

Regarding the impact from these machines being down, Dr Sands said: “You had several cases that were postponed because certain instruments could not be sterilized on time. But these were unexpected failures. These are mechanical devices that can fail. Once they do fail then you get them back up and that’s what was done.”

When asked if he would describe the impact as negligible, Dr Sands replied, “I don’t ever make the comment that anything that interferes with patient care is negligible, but in the interim period we had the supportive assistance of Doctor’s Hospital to sterilize instruments and so cases continued. And now our local capacity at PMH has been fully restored.”

“So two cases were cancelled as a result. All other cases proceeded.” However, the health minister could not confirm the nature of the two cancelled procedures.

“At 2:50 (Thursday) I got a note that one of the sterilizers was now functional, it passed the verification test and one load was sterilized successfully. And then at 5:11 the second machine was brought back on line.

“One of the machines went down on Wednesday…The one that was fully functioning began leaking on fittings on the boiler. The second was heating but not optimally due to damage from recent power outages and was being repaired. And that information we would have gotten at 11:41 (Thursday).

“So on Wednesday when one machine went down, we had one. By the following day the final machine that was functioning on Wednesday started leaking. But by Thursday afternoon both of those machines were repaired. And at this point both of the machines are functioning and the impact was, I am advised, two cases were cancelled.”

When asked whether he thinks the hospital needs new autoclave machines, Dr Sands said: “I wouldn’t be able to answer that - I mean, again bear in mind that these machines are new. The Critical Care Block was just opened in 2014.