Replacing saline bottles

[jlw]

We outdate our saline cubes 30 days after opening as required. There has been a question raised as to how to insure that the saline on the benches are not outdated, so one of my transfusion services changes out the bottles (they have 2 sets that they alternate) each time the cube outdates. Now the question posed is what type of cleaning would be required for these nalgene saline bottles. My other sites just empty and reuse the same saline bottles indefinitely. Does anyone know of any regulations or guidelines to determine what we should really do?

[Lcsmrz]

We rinse with DI and reuse the same bottles with every cube change, giving them a 30-day outdate along with the cube they came from.

I vaguely remember hypochlorite affecting RBC antigens, so I might caution against bleaching them, unless you rinse them very well.

[bbbirder]

I had exactly this same question and have been waiting for more replies.

Larry... do you discard your saline bottles every day and put new ones into use?

I hate to be filling up land fills with bottles if I don't need to.

Are there other alternatives?

Linda Frederick

[skopti]

We Replace the saline Bottles monthly every time we change the saline cubes or bottles. Giving them a 30 day expiration.

[bbbirder]

Whoops! I meant to say "every month", not "every day" in my previous post.

(Duh...)

I still hate to thow away that many bottles.

[Lcsmrz]

We don't discard & refill saline bottles each day as SOP, however the veterans will do that automatically when they arrive. As a small facility, we don't use a full cube in 30 days, so the practice doesn't bother me ....

[adiescast]

As part of the QC program, we wash our saline bottles monthly. We actually use a dishwaher for this. The dishwasher is the same one used to wash chemistry's glassware. We tried autoclaving the bottles, but they are not able to withstand that level of heat.