Windsor Regional Closing Operating Rooms

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Windsor Regional Hospital will be closing some of the operating rooms at its Ouellette campus temporarily.

Hospital officials say the closures will take place effective immediately as a result of a need to replace the hospital’s pressure release valve that supplies and regulates the steam pressure to the sterilizers in the medical device reprocessing department.

They say staff cannot get enough pressure for the steam to operate all three sterilizers. “We have enough steam to run one of the sterilizers but as a result of the stress to system and the fact the replacement parts will be here Friday we are erring on the side of caution and patient safety to close down the majority of the operating rooms until the system is returned to full capacity,” say officials.

Windsor Regional officials say there are three small stand alone sterilizer units that run on an independent line that will still run to accommodate emergent cases, and there are sterile trays used in clinics or on the floors.

Officials considered alternative approaches but say they cannot sterilize equipment at the Met campus and bring to the Ouellette campus due to changes in humidity and heat during travel.

The replacement parts are scheduled to arrive Friday and the sterilization systems should be fixed and back operational by midnight Friday or early Saturday morning after necessary testing.

In the meantime the surgical team has been and will continue to work on accommodating as many patients as possible at the Met campus for surgery.