Investigating the Health and Economic Evaluation of Health-Care Wastes Disinfection Equipment of Tehran Hospitals in 2016

Introduction: Health-care waste can threaten the health of humans and environment due to dangerous, toxic and pathogenic agents. This study was conducted to investigate the status of disinfection equipment in Tehran hospitals as well as their health and economic evaluation in 2016. Materials and Methods: In this research, 27 hospitals in Tehran that equipped with disinfection equipment were selected randomly. For health evaluation of chemclave, autoclave and hydroclave disinfection equipment was used respectively form the Bacillus Atrophies Indicator, a plastic vial of stearothermophilus and a vial of syringe and for economic evaluation a standard checklist was used. Finally, Fisher's exact test was used to analyze the data. Results: The results of health evaluation showed that the removal rate of indicator organisms in hydroclave, autoclave and chemclave disinfection equipment were 100%, 86.7% and 75%, respectively. The results of the economic evaluation showed that the investment cost of the Autoclave and Hydroclave were over 100 thousand dollars and the chemiclave was below 100 thousand dollars (P = 0.002). The most reduction of waste volume after disinfection was related to hydroclave and autoclave devices (P ≤ 0.001). The highest amount of odor production was in the chemiclave and the minimal was in the autoclave and hydrocollo method (P = 0.003). Also, hydroclave and autoclave were the environmentally friendly methods and chemiclave was not (P = 0.004). Conclusions: By comparing health and economical assessments, the autoclave disinfection device at the moment, if resolved the grinding problem, is the best way for health-care waste disinfection.