Packaging’s Role in Protecting the Patient

When it comes to the medical packaging industry, there are two things we all have in common. 1) We’ve all been a patient, and 2) we all know someone who has been a patient. I believe this is where so much passion in this industry comes from. Our work, while not as obvious as the surgent or doctor’s, directly impacts the ones we love.

Before I started in this industry if you asked me if I thought about packaging, I’d be lying if my answer was yes. Today, I see it everywhere—it’s one of those things once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. I personally can speak to how packaging played a role in the delivery of my son, how it protected my dad with his neck surgery, or my husband with a broken clavicle.   

When my husband was a junior in high school, he reached his hockey stick at just the right angle that when he and an opposing teammate collided, it resulted in a severely broken clavicle, requiring what is called an open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) procedure. Each step of the surgical procedure has a significant amount of packaging involved. Let’s take a look at some of the packaging that would have been used in this surgery.  

The Surgical Process:   

Room and sterile field are prepped. General anesthesia & regional nerve anesthesia are administered. Vital sign monitoring is readied for continuous monitoring.  

*Whether the surgical plan calls for intubation or not, an intubation kit will be opened 90% of the time so the team is ready in case of emergencies.                 

• The affected area is cleaned and the first incision is made. The surgeon will bring the pieces of clavicle back into alignment (reduction and will secure the pieces of clavicle to each other (fixation). To do this, he or she may use screws, metal plates, wires, and pins, all of which is typically packaged in a kit with a Zone coated Tyvek® lid/tray configuration.  

Why is the packaging designed this way? Zone coated lids are important in this packaging as any device being placed into the human body should not come in contact with adhesive coating applied to lidding. Depending on the company providing the device you can sometimes see this appear in a double tray configuration. A tray/lid combination is typically preferred for medical devices that will be implanted due to their high-value and need to remain secure and protected.  

• Layers of skin and muscle are surgically closed around the clavicle. 

As you can see from this high-level look at a surgical procedure, and just digging into a small portion of the packaging needed, there is a lot! If devices are not handled and protected appropriately, there is an opportunity for contamination which puts the patient’s safety at risk—packaging is a vital component to proper handling and aseptic presentation. The takeaway: in one procedure there are multiple points that our work makes a difference and impacts the outcome for the patient.  

Fuente:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/clavicle-fracture-open-reduction-and-internal-fixation