We all know that an unhygienic piercing environment is a bad thing and can lead to all sorts of complications. So when I started to get into piercing in earnest a few years ago, I did a lot of research and chose a reputable studio, eventually settling on Cold Steel in London. A major reason for this choice was their emphasis on hygiene and sterility. Their claims to have hospital grade sterilisation made me feel very confident in them indeed. After all, hospitals are ultra-sterile, aren't they?
At A Glance Author Titanium Angel Contact Titanium [email protected] IAM titanium_angel When N/A Recently I had outpatient surgery to remove precancerous cells from my cervix, and the more I reflect on the experience, the more I wonder if hospitals always live up to piercing studio grade sterilisation and practices. The hospital shall remain nameless, but according to the British government league tables, it is among the leading National Health Service (NHS) trusts in the country. What follows may sound like a bit of a horror story, so I would first like to stress that I am merely emphasising causes for concern, and that the procedure as a whole was executed competently. For the most part, the issues are more of being seen to carry out good practice rather than necessarily suggesting that standards were not being upheld.
The first surprise came as soon as I went into the colposcopy room for treatment. As we all know, you should run a mile from a piercer who does not get all their equipment out of their autoclaved packages before your very eyes. However, in this case, a large array of instruments, swabs, cotton wool and so forth that might be needed were already laid out on a trolley. The speculum to be used was the only item to be taken out of its packaging in front of me. This struck me as a little odd, but then again, there were a lot of items to unwrap, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt that this had been done while I was talking to the consultant in the room next door. After the surgery, when only what had been used was removed from the room in a tray, and the rest of the equipment remained on the trolley and was wheeled into a corner, I started to wonder whether they would be clearing away the unused equipment. I know that patient to patient cross-contamination would be unfo rgivable in a hospital, but I wonder how long tools are left unwrapped on this trolley awaiting use. The risk of air-borne contamination is fairly small, but in a reputable piercing shop, it is a risk that would certainly not be taken.
Then there are the gloves. In an average piercing session, my piercer will get through maybe 4 pairs of latex gloves, sometimes more. However, the doctor and the nurse gloved up once and that was it. At one point, the doctor had a coughing fit, and while I am sure that his hand went up to cover his mouth on reflex, he did not rewash his hands or change the gloves. While the surgery is done 'remotely' with various instruments, so he would not have directly touched the open wound, it would still be good hygiene practice to change gloves in those particular circumstances.
Before the surgery could take place, I was given 4 shots of local anaesthetic in my cervix. This bled for some time, and while I realise that the area is a fairly vascular one, and the blood was allowed to flow freely (whereas in a piercing the jewellery would help quell it), in hindsight I wonder whether a couple of glasses of wine I had the night before may have contributed to the lengthy bleed. Whereas piercers advise you not to drink alcohol in the 24 hours preceding a procedure, I received none such instructions from the hospital prior to my surgery, and as such it did not occur to me not to drink wine with my dinner the evening before. Likewise, the nurse asked me half way through the procedure whether I had eaten that morning, when it was too late to do anything about it if I hadn't! Just as these little pieces of information are found on Cold Steel's business cards for customers' information, surely it would not have been too much trouble for the hospital to put a note about these things on the letter informing patients when their surgery is to take place.
As part of the procedure, the cells were stained with iodine. Remembering the questions on the release forms I have to sign prior to being pierced, and a discussion I had with a piercer about the subject once, I commented that I was surprised the doctor had not asked me whether I was allergic to iodine before preparing to paint it on me. A barrage of excuses flew around from the doctor and the assisting nurse, ranging from iodine allergy being very rare and not serious so there was no point asking, to the fact that he usually asked but for some reason it had slipped his mind. The excuses didn't match up and seemed a little panicky, covering up for a little bit of corner-cutting.
After the procedure was done, the nurse went through 'aftercare' with me. This was largely concerned with ways of not disturbing the healing area, which is fair enough. However, I felt they often gave valid advice for the wrong reasons. For example, they said not to go swimming for 2 months because there is a risk of bleeding and tampons cannot be worn (as they displace the clot on the cervix). I would have thought the risk of introducing infection from the not-so-clean water might have been more of a worry. They told me I could bathe as normal, though I don't think that perfumed, glitter filled bath treats would be a good thing, and went back to my old way of healing below-the-neck piercings � baths with some sea salt and lavender essential oil in. This is the kind of practical advice you pick up from piercers, yet the doctors do not volunteer it. Their attitude seemed to be to take it easy, and do very little, and if the wound got infected, just go and get some anti biotics. I might have expected a little more along the lines of prevention being better than cure.
So what have I learnt from this experience? Firstly that my piercers certainly do meet up to the high standards they claim to. Secondly that the medical establishment seems to be somewhat complacent about very important issues of hygiene. Most people, of course, would not notice a lot of the little things I did, as an appearance of hygiene and probably more than a minimum standard was being upheld. It is ironic, though, that my experiences of an industry often criticised for being dangerous and unhygienic should highlight the shortcomings in medical practice.
Furthermore, it is worrying that while there is choice in the piercing world, allowing the consumer to select a reliable hygienic studio on the basis of research, the luxury of choice is lacking in medical scenarios. In the UK, you get referred to your local hospital for such treatment, and have to rely on scrupulous staff maintaining the necessary standards of sterility, general cleanliness, and good medical practice in order to have safe and successful treatments. Thankfully this is generally the case.
What concerned me most about my experience was that things I take for granted in a piercing studio were not commonplace in the hospital setting. I don't want this account to be taken as a horror story about the medical establishment, or to suggest that there is a major chance of complications. However, I do wonder whether, in this age of antibiotic resistant super-bugs, and while the modification community is being made to be ever more open and stringent about its hygiene procedures, the medical community should not be making efforts to do the same. Openly demonstrating a concern for hygienic procedure would not take much more effort, and could save patients a lot of worry.