Safety of plasma-based sterilization: surface modifications of polymeric medical devices induced by Sterrad and Plazlyte processes.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Plasma-based sterilization is a promising alternative to the use of pure ethylene oxide (EO), for low-temperature clinical sterilization of medical instruments and devices. However, few studies have been published that evaluate its safety in terms of possible damage to materials, particularly polymers. The objective of this work was to evaluate polymer surface modifications induced by commercial plasma-based sterilizers, in comparison with pure EO: Samples from 5 polymer-based devices were subjected to 1, 5, and 10 sterilization cycles by Sterrad-100, Plazlyte, and pure EO. Surface analysis was carried out by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), dynamic contact angle measurements (DCA), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Surface oxidation and wettability changes were observed on all samples sterilized by plasma-based techniques, the degree of modifications depending on the sterilizer (Sterrad, Plazlyte) and the type of polymer. Drastic changes of surface appearance were also observed by SEM on PVC samples sterilized by Plazlyte and by pure EO. Possible repercussions on safety are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".