Expired Medical Materials Policy

IACUC Policy: 054-03, Effective Date: 07/18/2014, Last Revision: 11/17/2023

Overview/Purpose

This policy describes the situations for limited use of expired materials in live, vertebrate animals undergoing non-survival procedures. Furthermore, it prohibits the use of expired medical materials (e.g., drugs, fluids, anesthetics, sedatives, or analgesics) during any survival procedure/surgery.

Definitions

• Expired Medical Materials: Any pharmaceutical, biologic, or medical supply item that is beyond the imprinted expiration date.
• Non-survival Procedures: Any procedure or surgery where an animal is anesthetized and euthanized prior to recovery.
• “Acute Use Only”: In the context of expired materials, “acute use” refers to use only in non-survival procedures as defined above.

Requirements

• Expired analgesics, sedatives, anesthetics, and euthanasia solutions must not be used even in non-survival procedures as their efficacy during the procedure cannot be guaranteed if they are expired.
• Medical materials used in survival procedures must not be expired. It is acceptable to resterilize medical materials such as catheters, pacemakers, and suture as long as the new expiration date is noted on the package and material performance is not negatively impacted by resterilization.
• Expired medical supplies must Expired medical supplies must be discarded or segregated from non-expired medical materials, and clearly labeled “Expired- for Acute Use Only” or “Expired-for Non-Survival Procedures Only.”
• Expired materials not for animal use must be segregated from animal use items and clearly labeled “Expired - Not for Animal Use.”
• Disposal of expired material must be in accordance with all relevant institutional, local, state, and federal requirements.