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According to the ISO 11137 - Sterilization of health care products - 'Requirements for validation and routine control - Radiation sterilization' - and the United States Food and Drug Administration regulations, medical devices must be given an expiry date, which indicates how long they may be stored prior to use. Real time ageing is the best way to do this, but no organisation can afford to delay its products launch waiting for the real time ageing tests. A method of accelerated ageing is required that realistically recreates what a product may experience during storage. Accelerated ageing is achieved by storing the product at an elevated temperature. The experimental conditions using as guidance the ISO 11137 was testing the effect that ionising radiation (gamma and electron beam) would have on the stability of the materials that make up the materials of the operation room garment before and after ageing. Testing included specific properties essential to the intended function of the product and the dose level was 25 kGy, the radiation doses usually used for this kind of product. Since most of the medical devices can be stored up to 5 years prior to use, after an inquiry including all national and private hospitals in Portugal and another survey in France, we discovered that the single-use products, also the operation room garments - aim of our research and considered a nonactive medical device - is stored no longer than one year. So we simulated one year storage and observed the changes through microscopical examination. The results will be presented in this poster.