SuperLift containers carry biological samples

After surgery, removed organs and tissue are often taken from hospital to laboratory for analysis. Hazardous formaldehyde is usually part of the procedure, but now it can be spared because the SuperLift container makes the special transport safe and easy without it.

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The Italian company Kaltek srl has serviced hospitals for many years with a range of professional and specialised solutions. One of them was to provide containers from RPC Superfos pre-filled with formaldehyde, a very toxic liquid that preserves biological samples. These containers were used to bring post-surgery tissue and organs from a hospital to a laboratory.

The positive side of formaldehyde is that it keeps organs and tissue intact; this is important when you have to transport these items for a medical analysis. The negative side is that formaldehyde is lethal even in very small quantities and therefore extremely complex to handle.

Eliminating the use of formaldehyde
The owner and CEO of Kaltek srl, Dr. Lorenzo Cortelazzo, felt that something should be done to improve health and safety conditions for the hospital staff working with post-surgery biological samples. He explains:

“We noted the options which RPC Superfos offers the food industry in terms of long shelf life and oxygen barriers and then we made the connection from there to the biological samples. The idea was to treat organs and tissue in the same way as foodstuff, taking out and keeping out the oxygen of a container and preserve them that way and eliminating the use of formaldehyde.”

Tests were made in cooperation with a partner from the filling equipment industry and were successful.

Flush, seal and off to the lab
Only recently the idea of Dr. Cortelazzo has been implemented: The result is a brand new system including a machine that can be operated by one person only. After excision, the organ or tissue is placed in the SuperLift container and a vacuum is created. Within seconds, the container is closed by heat sealing of an oxygen barrier film. For the special hospital service the SuperLift container is used in two sizes but with the same diameter so that it is easy to operate the sealing machine at all times.

The grip of the container makes further handling easy and the SuperLift container has a large area on which hospital staff can insert data to identity the biological sample

“The first reactions that we have received from users at the hospitals have been very good. Our project has been met with huge interest and we trust that we are on the right track,” says Dr. Lorenzo Cortelazzo, who stresses that it has been a pleasure to cooperate with RPC Superfos.