The sterile instrument table steristay maintains the sterility of the instruments and implants during surgery
A main problem especially in long operations is the contamination of surgical instruments due to human presence and their activity within the operating room. Even in more modern operating theatres with a large ceiling-mounted laminar flow system, the instruments are almost always prepared outside the sterile zone and have thus lost their sterility before they are used. After one hour of surgery, the bacterial loads on the instruments are already very high. For elderly or immunosuppressed patients or in the presence of prostheses, even a very low bacterial load is enough to cause infection or rejection of the prosthesis . In an conventional operating room you can expect about 50 to 200 CFU/m3. This number is rising the more people are in the operating room and the longer the operation last. As few as 10 colony forming units (CFU/m3) are sufficient to cause a deep infection*. Gosden PE, Mac GowanAP Bannister GC J. Hosp Infect 1998;
The sterile surgical instrument table maintains the sterility of the instrument table even during long operations and reduces therefore the risk of an surgical site infection SSI.
Focused laminar flow systems: the air is filtered through hepa filters free of microorganisms and then directed immediately onto the surgical instruments and surgical site. It is only then distributed throughout the operating theatre. This protects the critical area of the operating theatre, i.e. the instruments and the surgical site.