Aplicación de Plasma Frío a Baja Presión para Esterilización de Implementos Médicos

Cold plasma is a new non-thermal technology using energetic and non-reactive reactive gases, commonly used in materials science to modify the surface properties of a wide range of materials. Additionally, it is proven as a powerful tool for the inactivation of various pathogens (eg, bacteria, fungi, viruses) in the food industry, agriculture, and the medical field to inactivate contaminating microbes such as cleaning medical equipment. In the present study, the main modes of action are due to ultraviolet light and the ionization process by cold plasma, modifying variables of time, pressure, power, combining these parameters with a reactive gas and an inert gas, the best combination of low-pressure cold plasma application procedure so that all surgical equipment used for the treatment of patients is sterilized; chemical antimicrobial agents are not required, and the process is environmentally friendly. It was possible to obtain the total elimination of the microorganisms and the effective treatment times ranged between 10 and 30 min with generator powers of 30% and 70%, the applied pressure varies between 0.3 to 2 mbar according to the different combinations of the mentioned variables and gas used. The efficiency of the process is demonstrated in the comparison of the variables of time and power against the current thermal plasma system with hydrogen peroxide, the study having an improvement of 50% with respect to the time necessary to sterilize and with powers not greater than 70 %. of the generator.