Environmental footprint of single-use surgical instruments in comparison with multi-use surgical instruments

Abstract

Manufacturers have been driven towards sustainable manufacturing due to various external and internal forces. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely used to assess a product's environmental performance in order to meet arising challenges. This research presents the environmental footprint assessment of single-use and multi-use surgical scissors which are manufactured by AESCULAP AG and a single-use surgical scissors produced by a comparable manufacturer. The cradle-to-gate and the cradle-to-grave assessments were conducted to compare the three surgical scissors using the IPCC GWP100 and Eco-indicator 99 methods. A break-even analysis estimates the preference between single-use and multi-use scissors depending on the use scenario.