Feasibility and safety of reprocessing of intracardiac echocardiography catheters for electrophysiology procedures - a large single center experience

Purpose: Intra-cardiac echocardiography (ICE) has become an important tool for catheter ablation. Adoption of ICE imaging is still limited because of its prohibitively high cost. Our aim was to study the safety and feasibility of ICE catheters reprocessing and its environmental and financial impact.

Methods: This was a single center retrospective analysis of all consecutive electrophysiology procedures in which ICE catheters were used from 2015 to 2022. In total, 1128 patients were studied (70.6% male, mean age was 57.9 ± 13.2 years). The majority of procedures were related to atrial fibrillation ablation (84.6%).

Results: For the whole cohort, 57 new ICE catheters were used. Consequently one catheter could be used for 19.8 procedures. New catheters were only used when the image obtained by reused probes was not satisfactory. There were no cases of ICE probe steering mechanism malfunction, no procedure related infections and no allergic reactions that could be attributed to the resterilization process. In total, there was 8.6% of complications not related to ICE imaging. Financially, ICE probe reprocessing resulted with 90% cost reduction (> 2 millions of Euros savings for the studied period) and 95% waste reduction (639.5 kg less, mostly non degradable waste was produced).

Conclusion: Our data suggests that ICE catheter reprocessing is feasible and safe. It seems that risk of infection is not increased. Significant economic and environmental savings could be achieved by ICE catheters reprocessing. Furthermore, ICE reprocessing could allow more extensive ICE usage resulting in safer procedures with a potential reduction of serious complications.