eto gas sterilization has significant penetration into the health care industry, penetrating 0.3mm thickness multilayer package material at 30-50 ° C with a 99.9999% pass rate for heat-sensitive instrument sterilization (e.g. endoscopes, macromolecular catheters). According to the data of Johnson & Johnson Medical Suzhou factory in 2021, the production of joint replacement instruments through ETO sterilization has increased by 37% every year, and the percentage of material loss has decreased from 2.1% of traditional high temperature sterilization to 0.03%. Its penetrability in gas molecules enables it to treat complex structural instruments. At sterilization of a ventilator circuit with a 4-meter tube, the rate of killing of biobarded was 82% higher than steam sterilization in a 3A hospital, and the life of the instrument was prolonged by 3.2 years.
The technology economy is also demonstrated in the batch processing capability, the overall 1300L sterilization chamber can sterilize 120 sets of heart stents (approximately 48 million yuan) at one time, and the unit sterilization cost is only 0.38 yuan/piece. Compared with 20 million yuan of fixed asset investment for the radiation sterilization equipment, the purchase budget for ETO sterilization system can be limited to 4.8 million yuan, and 64% saving in the maintenance cost annually. In 2023, a report from Hospital Infection Control in China showed that after sterilization by ETO gas in a general hospital, instrument turnover was increased to 2.7 batches per day and emergency surgical instrument preparation time was reduced by 55%.
For the material compatibility, the effect value of ETO sterilization on the physical property of 38 medical polymer samples (such as PE and silica gel) is less than 0.5%, while the impact strength of polycarbonate devices can decrease by 12% with the use of gamma rays. When Medtronic used the technology in a smart pacemaker with 32 precision sensors, the rate of failure of electronic components was minimized from 0.7% to 0.02% in steam sterilization. The new accelerated resolution process, approved by the FDA in 2019, reduces the conventional 72-hour ventilation cycle to 14 hours, minimizing the residual concentration from 176ppm to 4ppm (the ISO 10993-7 standard limit is 25ppm).
In epidemic prevention and control, the broad spectrum of bactericidal activity of eto gas sterilization is particularly precious, which inactivated COVID-19 with a concentration of 600mg/L at 45% relative humidity (Ct value reached 30), and filtration efficiency of N95 masks decreased only by 0.3% (2.1% by epoxy sterilization in the control group). Wuhan Leishenshan Hospital adopted this technology in 2020 to complete sterilization treatment for 120,000 protective clothes within a single day, and in the experiment of microbial challenge, it was discovered that log reduction value of spores of Bacillus subtilis black variety was up to 6.0, far exceeding the 4.0 medical standard of sterilization.
In environmental protection, the catalytic decomposition system with the new ETO sterilizer can improve exhaust gas treatment efficiency to 99.99%, and exhaust gas emission concentration is less than 1ppm (EU limit 5ppm). Since Boston Scientific launched the technology in 2022, the ETO environmental monitoring value around the plant dropped from 0.18μg/m³ to 0.02μg/m³, exceeding the U.S. EPA standard of 0.1μg/m³. Intelligent control system through real-time monitoring of cabin pressure (50-120kPa), temperature (±0.5℃) and humidity (±3%RH), deviation rate of sterilization parameter from 7.8% manual operation to 0.9%, product release pass rate increased to 99.98%.