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A comment on Italian hospital saves Covid-19 patients by 3D printing valves. Parent comment

Re:Italian hospital saves Covid-19 patients by 3D printing v... by swebs on Monday March 16, 2020 @08:32AM (#22592099)
>Autoclave at 132 C for 4.5 hours

All hospitals should have autoclaves, shouldn't they?

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Re:Italian hospital saves Covid-19 patients by 3D printing v... by pnutjam on Monday March 16, 2020 @09:44AM (#22592574)
Not everything can go in autoclaves: https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/16/porter-hospital-infect...
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Re:Italian hospital saves Covid-19 patients by 3D printing v... by neltnerb on Monday March 16, 2020 @09:26AM (#22592441)
Every biology adjacent facility I've ever heard of requires them for at a minimum biohazard waste disposal. I don't know how a hospital could not have enough given that all those plastic one time use parts still get autoclaved after disposal.

In terms of overall mass, sterilizing all those parts should be equivalent to throwing them away. It would require different internal procedures though, I don't think people are used to saving and reusing things. And it would be more labor intensive. And autoclaving might destroy the parts.

Most of which seem like reasonable tradeoffs in an emergency.

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