Background: Although an increasing number of medical devices are labeled "for single use only," cleaning and reuse of single-use medical devices continues, because of the economic incentive. We conducted a survey of the economic literature to obtain the current evidence available and to assess the costs and benefits of reusing single-use medical devices.
Methods: A comprehensive literature search was carried out to identify articles that compared single use and reuse of single-use medical devices and that met specific scientific criteria, including evaluation of economic outcomes. Each selected article was independently reviewed by 2 reviewers to extract cost and clinical outcome data and to assess the quality of the study.
Results: Nine published articles met the selection criteria. The savings were about 49% of the direct cost. These savings would be offset by adverse-event costs, but none were detected. However, quality of the studies was generally poor.
Conclusions: There is little available evidence of quality in the published literature to assess the practice of reuse of single-use medical devices. Moreover, data on clinical outcomes are missing and, where available, cannot be attributed specifically to the reuse of single-use medical devices.