International journal of pharmaceutics
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Reutilization of single-use vials containing medical drugs is still under discussion. This practice has been adopted as a standard to avoid drug wastage, particularly in developing countries and in the aftermath of disasters. Some studies have assessed sterility of medications stored in single-use vials after utilization as multiple doses; however, most of these were limited to one single drug, included a low number of samples and did not consider an intermediate transfer step from the vial to a disposable syringe. The purpose of this study was to assess microbial contamination of samples withdrawn over three days from disposable syringes prepared from single-use vials. ⋯ This study demonstrated that contents initially stored in single-use vials and subsequently transferred into disposable syringes in an operating room using sterile technique, maintain sterility after 4 withdrawals per day for a total of 3 days.