Design and construction of a plasma source for medical applications

Abstract

Currently there is a rapid growth in the use of low temperature ionized gas plasmas for application in the medical area especially for therapeutic purposes, among its applications are the efficiency to sterilize water, ability to eliminate bacteria, treatment of diseases and the sterilization of medical instruments. The latter is a major problem nowadaysbecause according to official WHO figures in Latin America our countries are at risk of contracting nosocomial infections between 2 and 20 times more than in the developed world; in some of them the proportion of affected patients can exceed 25%. In the present work we propose the design and construction of a low-cost plasma generating source for use in the sterilization of medical instruments for daily use, in such a way toachieve technological independence in the manufacture of this type of device, the results obtained show that the developed equipment possesses suitable sterilization qualities for medical applications.