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Hi Michelle
There are a number of reasons who soluble alginate stitching bags are no longer used much. They tend to start dissolving the stitching when in contact with warm fluid, so they are not very good at containing body fluids. The plastic strip’s have to be manually taken from the washed load before it is placed in the dryer and it causes issues.
The main reason we previously used soluble bags inside cloth linen bags was to contain moisture, but as previously said thus doesn’t work that well. Many laundries now have either fluid resistant linen bags available,or allow facilities to put heavily soaked linen into clear plastic bags that can be decanted manually into washers.
We also used to use alginate stitched bags for cytotoxic linen, but now we use strong purple plastic bags which are carefully manually decanted by laundry staff, as the alginate bags would start to dissolve and create a hazard in transit to the laundry.
There may be some situations where alginate stitched bags are useful in used linen management, but we certainly no longer use them at all.
My thoughts, anyway, from a mainly acute care focus.
Cheers
Michael
Michael Wishart
Infection Control Coordinator
St Vincent's Private Hospital Northside & St Vincent's Private Hospital Brisbane
Brisbane, QLD
michael.wishart@svha.org.au