Traceability and Laser marking on Surgical Instruments

Companies that are selling instruments CE marked, should certainly have the CE mark appearing on the device. In addition to this, a LOT number and manufacturer name should also appear.

Any surgical instruments that are being used on trays, which do not have this basic traceable information, will not have any way they can be tracked or traced. How many times do we see on a tray and i.e. Gillies Dissecting Forcep, with the words ‘CE’ and ‘stainless’ stamped on them? In this day and age, when the government is talking about coding every instrument, this is simply not enough information. How else do we know where the instrument was manufactured, or who it was manufactured by if there was a need to recall?

Laser marking instruments gives improved tracking and traceability of instrumentation, and can be linked into your own HSDU tracking system. Traditionally we laser mark batch/LOT number, CE mark company details, but the introduction of GS1 has changed this. With GS1 2D matrix, the mark can be scaled down to fit the tiniest micro instrument, with commercial applications as small as 300 micrometres.