I cannot name and shame here - it is definitely frowned upon in our department. I may be wrong but I thought that the machine eventually came from the same company. There was something about the procedure that meant certain companies were involved and it was all tied up together, such as research. Something like that, anyway.
I really cannot understand what the problem was with selling the Heraeus, as it happens. There was some suggestion that the syringes being spun fit too snugly into the rotor such that there was a contamination risk from the scrub nurse having to touch the retaining sleeve to get the things out. But as the rotor and sleeves would (surely?) have to be decontaminated after each procedure anyway, I could not comprehend why that was an issue.
By implication, the machine without the correct lid interlock allowed the syringes to fit less snugly so that the scrub nurse didn't have to get his bloody fingerprints all over the rotor. However, it also had no proper aerosol particulate protection, which the Labofuge 200 claims to have.
If you had seen the procedure in work as I did, there were several points where something might not necessarily be in ideal conditions - touching the sleeves or rotor was the least of their problems. There was a rack for the syringes and the trolley top that it was standing on that would also by that reasoning be a contamination hazard, but they are similarly cleaned so why just focus on the centrifuge? Part of the process involved tipping the serum and blood spun out of the fat onto a wad of paper towelling...! Yummy.
