Surgical (Wedding Cake) Crashers: 7 Surprising Things Your SPD Should Not Be Sterilizing

The average sterile processing department has a number of similarities with a wedding cake: lots of expensive ingredients mixed together and every step and ingredient have to be perfect, or it has the potential to ruin someone’s big day. And just like a wedding cake, there are certain things that should not be included in the final product. No one wants to accidentally take a bite of a decorative flower or chip a tooth on a plastic bride-and-groom figurine. Likewise, surgeons and surveyors don’t want to open a surgical tray to find something in there that really shouldn’t belong. Wedding cake surprises may ruin a day, but sterilization surprises can impact lives.

What are these surprising additions to surgical trays that don’t deserve to be there? What items most often show up without an IFU invite? Let’s take a look at seven sterile processing ingredients that you should leave out of your trays and out in the cold.

Nonsurgical spoons Believe it or not, there is such a thing as a surgical-grade spoon. Used in everything from OB/GYN procedures to cardiothoracic surgeries to lift the sternum while stitching, these surgical-grade medical devices really do serve a clinical purpose. The pr