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Saturday, October 15, 2011

How to clean nebs

My first year out of college, living on my own for the 1st time, I got pretty overwhelmed with cleaning/sterilizing  my nebs. I'm of the school of thought that bacteria (mainly, pseudamonas) will grow on nebs in between treatments if you don't clean and sterilize them (if you don't believe me, take your neb to a lab and have it swiped to see what bacteria are growing). Why put bacteria back in to your lungs while doing a breathing treatment?

So my solution when I first started living on my own to the cleaning/sterilizing neb thing? Simple. Stop doing pulmozyme regularly, and therefore have one less neb to clean.

Trust me, that didn't work out very well.

So the method I came up with was to get a little table top dishwasher that cleaned and sterilized nebs in one simple step!

I bought the dishwasher from Walmart online, and had it delivered. http://www.walmart.com/ip/Danby-Compact-Countertop-EnergyDishwasher/9854464

The CFF states that if your nebs are explosed to water that is at least "158° F for 30 minutes," this will kill PA. http://www.cff.org/UploadedFiles/LivingWithCF/StayingHealthy/Germs/StoppingTheSpread/Stopping-the-Spread-of-Germs.pdf  (page 2, right column)

Bingo! the dishwasher sterilizes AND cleans all in one. I don't think any other method does this - if so, let me know so we can spread the word!

Needless to say, nearly 10 years later, I of course do my pulmozyme 2x/day like I am supposed to, because it's easy to have clean and sterile nebs! :)