The award for the most creative — and brazen —campaign against reprocessing single-use devices has got to go to HemaClear. The maker of the single-use surgical tourniquet handed out about 900 condoms from its booth at the AORN Congress in March in Philadelphia. The condom's package read: "Would you re-use this? Don't risk re-using surgical tourniquets either."

Grant Castor, HemaClear's national sales manager, says he was concerned how AORN attendees would react when he handed them the condoms. "But people loved it. We definitely made some good noise," he says. "It was successful because it created awareness that we do this every day and it's disgusting. It was probably the best $300 [for 1,000 condoms] I ever spent in marketing."

Even though it's common practice at many facilities to use reprocessed tourniquet cuffs, nurses at AORN agreed that doing so is, in Mr. Castor's word, "disgusting." Wayne M. Goldstein, MD, president and founder of the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute, likens it to wearing someone else's underwear.

HemaClear wants you to buy into "disposable technology " when it comes to tourniquet cuffs, says Mr. Castor. The HemaClear, priced between $30 and $75, is engineered to be used once and disposed of. The surgeon places the ring on the fingers (or toes) of the patient and then pulls the handles proximally. The silicone ring rolls up the limb while the stockinet sleeve covers it, exerting enough pressure to squeeze all the blood out and then block it at the occlusion site. Mr. Castor says it's nearly impossible to reuse it once it's rolled over a patient's limb.

Mr. Castor estimates that 60% of hospitals and surgery centers buy and use reprocessed tourniquets. In total knee cases, Dr. Goldstein notes, tourniquets are not in clean places on the patient's body. "They're sitting up by the groin, which is loaded with bacteria and highly contaminated," he says. "If patients really knew that that was removed from a patient and the same tourniquet used on them with little more than wiping it down, would be unacceptable to use someone else's tourniquet."

For more on single-use device manufacturers' attempts to thwart the reprocessing and reuse of their products, see this month's cover story of Outpatient Surgery Magazine.

Dan O'Connor