Packaging materials for plasma sterilization with the flowing afterglow of an N2–O2 discharge: damage assessment and inactivation efficiency of enclosed bacterial spores

Abstract

In conventional sterilization methods (steam, ozone, gaseous chemicals), after their proper cleaning, medical devices are wrapped/enclosed in adequate packaging materials, then closed/sealed before initiating the sterilization process: these packaging materials thus need to be porous. Gaseous plasma sterilization being still under development, evaluation and comparison of packaging materials have not yet been reported in the literature. To this end, we have subjected various porous packagings used with conventional sterilization systems to the N2–O2 flowing afterglow and also a non-porous one to evaluate and compare their characteristics towards the inactivation of B. atrophaeus endospores deposited on a Petri dish and enclosed in such packagings. Because the sterilization process with the N2–O2 discharge afterglow is conducted under reduced-pressure conditions, non-porous pouches can be sealed only after returning to atmospheric pressure. All the tests were therefore conducted with one end of the packaging freely opened, post-sealing being required. The features of these packaging materials, namely mass loss, resistance, toxicity to human cells as well as some characteristics specific to the plasma method used such as ultraviolet transparency, were examined before and after exposure to the flowing afterglow. All of our results show that the non-porous packaging considered is much more suitable than the conventionally used porous ones as far as ensuring an efficient and low-damage sterilization process with an N2–O2 plasma-afterglow is concerned.