Aseptic Dispensing and Radiopharmacy

The aim is to enable the radiopharmacists to maximize the aseptic dispensing usage and optimization of the production performance of the aseptic dispensing units so that to minimize the errors during medication and hence improving the safety of patient, patients outcome and consequently improving the hospital performance. The process involves Hand washing, gloving, critical sites and management of drugs. Hand Washing The section takes into consideration of the procedure and requirements of hand wash before carrying out of the cytotoxic drugs of aseptic dispensing. All jewelry from arms, hands, and fingers should be removed 2. Arms and hands should be wetted half to the elbow. The critical parts of the equipment that are sterile which include; syringe at its plunger and tips, the needle from bevel tip to the hub, ampoule at its neck and vial at its top part of rubber, should be avoided.

When these parts of the equipment come in contact with dirty hands, they are taken as contaminated equipment and must be replaced with the one that has not been contaminated immediately. The equipment critical parts should be washed with the wipes of alcohol sterile and dried before more treatments are done. a. Needle-Syringe Assembly When preparing cytotoxic drugs or reconstitution, Luer-lock syringes should be used. The Syringe Solution Measurement The section purpose to give the personnel with the best way on reading and measuring the syringe’s solution capacity. • The correct volume of the solution should be drawn into the syringe and carefully reading should be done before another step is taken. • The reading position should be the final edge of the barrel mark of the plunger piston in the syringe.

• For instance, the final edge is the position like the 1. 5Ml line on the syringe barrel. d. Content is drawn from the ampoule As given in the Syringe-Needle assembly, assemble the needle and syringe, and needle sheath is removed. Hold the syringe in the right hand, and open ampoule using the left hand and Needles' edge beveled is placed with graduated parts facing your side. Using the upward pressure from the plunger, the solution is taken in syringe up to an appropriate amount. At this time there should be few handling of the plunger. The content of the vial and expiry date is checked. The protective seal or vial cap is removed from the vail. The exposed bung is wiped with the sterile alcohol and given time to dry.

The syringe and the needle are assembled. The required amount of the reconstitution solution is drawn up into the syringe. The warning sign is put in the area where the spills have occurred to make sure that the contamination does not occur at that place. The person cleaning up should wear appropriate equipment for protection before starting cleaning up the mess. When any spill takes place, all the scheduled events should be halted until the time when the clean up is done to remove the mess. The kits that handle spills should be readily available all the time especially in the presence of drugs such as cytotoxic. The cytotoxic materials or items that are contaminated should be taken as a waste of cytotoxic and disposed.