Cleaning Brushes for Medical Instruments

For as long as surgical instruments have been used, cleaning brushes have been used to help with the sanitization process. When I was viewing at an editorial one time about American-Made surgical instruments, I noticed that a Civil War amputation set had its own cleaning brush in the set Pederson Speculum. No longer do we use industrial brushes, toothbrushes or even surgeon's hand scrub brushes to do our cleaning. But now-a-days we have various surgical instrument brushes for different cleaning purposes. Cleaning brushes are now man-made for cleaning the smallest hand held surgical Instruments in addition to suction tubes, laparoscopic instruments, forceps and flexible endoscopes.

Over the decades the medical instrument manufacturing process has came along way. Many brushes are known as wire twisted. This means they have to twist the 2 pieces of wire in together to keep the nylon bristles in order. In years past, this wire was often made of galvanized steel, which easily rusted and limited the life of the brush. Today most brushes are made using only medical grade nylon with surgical stainless steel wire. The latest improvement in brush technology is the use of antimicrobial nylon bristles, which combined with stainless steel wire, extends the life of the brush.

As previously mentioned, there are brushes for cleaning almost medical instrument and it is important to use the appropriate brush. For example, if the diameter your using for your brush is to large, then the brush wont clean it correctly. Keep in mind that if the bristle on the cleaning brush is to small then the lumen may not get cleaned properly like it should.