Healthmarket Digest - Issue No. 165

Living alone, I don't grocery shop very often and when I do some of the food items I get tend to stay in the refrigerator longer than expected. I'm sure many men can relate to my situation because I'm sure at some point or another most of them have had a fridge full of items that you should just throw out to be on the safe side.

Knowing me pretty well, my girlfriend Becky brought over grocery items for breakfast last Saturday. I think she wanted to be sure whatever I made her was safe for consumption. After taking a look inside my refrigerator her suspicions were confirmed. This turned out to be a great deal for me. She cleaned out my fridge and all I had to do is cook her breakfast

If everything in my fridge had a HangTimeKitTM label I would have been able to keep track of when I bought some of these items.

The HangTimeKitTM is the first step in managing flexible endoscope storage because they keep track of when they were last reprocessed. The kit includes HTK Labels. Each label is printed with 12 months and the numbers 1 - 31, representing the days of the month. Circle the month and date when the scope is reprocessed and wrap the tag on the scope with the self looping design.

If a scope has been stored for more than a couple of days you can find out if its still safe to use with a HTKTest. This simple and rapid test checks for gram negative bacteria that might have grown out during storage. Utilizing a unique enzyme detection method, the easy to read fluorometer checks for possible colony formation by reading telltale fluorescence in the recaptured water. If the fluorometer reading is positive for gram negative bacteria (which includes organisms such as E.Coli) reprocess the endoscope prior to use.

Matt Smith