Surgeries at Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora, which officials had stopped earlier this year over fears of contaminated equipment, returned Monday.

“Our surgical staff are excited to be in the operating room providing excellent care to Veterans,” Dr. Victor Quijano, chief of surgery, said in a statement Tuesday. “Many Veterans trust their VA doctors so much that they chose to wait to receive their procedures with us. We are happy to be helping these patients.”

Contaminated equipment led officials to reschedule hundreds of dental and surgical procedures in April after staff identified “black flecks” on two surgical trays.

The flecks were later identified as plastic.

“I was so proud of the staff who stopped the line when they saw the black flecks, which meant that we didn’t have any patients harmed by this issue,” Amir Farooqi, Interim Director of VAEastern Colorado Health Care System, said in an email to The Denver Gazette.

“It reinforces that no matter what, patient safety comes first. I’m also extremely proud of the hard work by staff to improve our systems and processes to ensure we don’t see this issue again.”

While hospital officials reported no injuries, contaminates on reusable equipment can introduce bacteria, viruses or fungi into the surgical site and lead to infections.

“Given the reliance on equipment and technology in today’s health care settings, issues with equipment do sometimes arise,” Cara Welch, a spokesperson for the Colorado Hospital Association, said previously.

Healthcare-associated infections are preventable.

Roughly 3% of patients in U.S. hospitals have a HAI, according to a 2015 survey.

It is unknown how many Colorado patients suffer from healthcare-associated infection, which can require additional treatment, suffering and death.

Just a handful of Colorado hospitals over the past three years have been cited by the state health department for contaminated equipment, The Denver Gazette reported last month.

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment citations since 2021 show just four hospitals — Children’s Hospital of Colorado in Aurora, St. Luke’s Medical Center in Denver and Animas Surgical Hospital and Mercy Hospital in Durango — have had issues with contaminated equipment or with the sterilization process.

In at least three instances, officials with the state health department deemed the issue serious enough to find what’s called “immediate jeopardy” against Animas, Children’s and St. Luke’s.

Immediate Jeopardy is any situation in which noncompliance puts the health and safety of patients at risk of serious injury, harm, impairment or death.

Surgical equipment can be disposable or reusable.

Reusable equipment includes items such as scalpels and dental tools, which impacts surgeries and routine dental appointments.

Standard operating procedure requires an equipment inspection prior to all procedures. It was during this inspection at the VA Hospital that the residue was discovered.

The issue — Beswick has previously said — appears to have been with the hospital’s steam sterilization system used to clean reusable medical equipment.

Officials had found residue on roughly 5% of the VA hospital’s surgical trays.

“As of July 22, 100% of RME surgical sets passed rigorous inspection, and we continue our phased reopening of surgical services,” Beswick told The Denver Gazette last month. “If these promising results continue, we will further expand procedures and return to full surgical operation on August 12.”

Not all surgeries at the VA, though, involve reusable medical equipment that is cleaned in house through a sterilization process.

As a federal entity, the state health department does not provide regulatory oversight of the VA hospital. That falls to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Corrective steps at the VA hospital included — among other things — replacing filters throughout the system, cleaning the equipment chambers and a scope assessment of the lines in the hospital’s steam system.

In total, 52 dental appointments and 181 surgeries in April were either re-scheduled or — if emergent — referred to community hospitals or other VA facilities.

“This is not a protocol failure; it is an example of safety processes working as intended,” Beswick has said.

Editor’s Note: The Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center provided The Denver Gazette with a quote Wednesday on the facility resuming surgeries and clarifying no patients were sickened or harmed.