What action should a surgical technologist take if the autoclave cycle fails while preparing implants?

The appropriate action for a surgical technologist when the autoclave cycle fails while preparing implants is to unwrap, decontaminate, and re-sterilize the implants with a biological test pack. This response ensures that the implants are properly cleaned and then subjected to a new sterilization cycle to guarantee their safety for surgical use.

If the autoclave cycle fails, it indicates that the sterilization process did not complete successfully. Simply rerunning the wrapped implants with an external chemical monitor does not address the problem since the chemical monitor will not confirm the sterility of the items if the previous cycle was incomplete. Therefore, this option is insufficient for ensuring that the implants are sterile.

Asking the night operating room supervisor to postpone the surgical procedure may seem like a viable option since the implants are not sterile, but it does not directly address the immediate need to ensure the implants are sterilized in a timely manner for the surgery to proceed if possible.

Scheduling a repair for the sterilizer and halting the sterilization of all implants is not a constructive solution at this point. The focus should be on resolving the issue with the specific implants in question rather than halting the entire sterilization process. The priority is to ensure that the implants are effectively