Sterilization Principle
The requirement to eliminate all viable forms of microbial life (vegetative cells, spores, etc.) from instruments and surgical environments, typically achieved via heat or chemical agents.
📜
The statement of the theorem
Define the microbial viability function representing the concentration of viable organisms at time given energy input . The principle requires that the decay of follows a first-order kinetic model: where is the initial bioburden, is the rate constant dependent on the energy source (e.g., temperature or chemical concentration), and the sterilization condition is met when (or ).