Following a series of deadly outbreaks in hospitals around the country, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first fully disposable version of the medical device implicated in the infections.

Reusable versions of the device — a long, snakelike tube with a fiber-optic camera at one end, called a duodenoscope — are inserted in one patient after another to diagnose and treat diseases of the pancreas and bile duct, like tumors and gallstones.

Duodenoscopes are used in 700,000 medical procedures each year. Yet tests showed that the devices could not be properly decontaminated between procedures because they cannot be sterilized by the usual methods.

After the outbreaks caused by duodenoscopes came to light, the F.D.A. had urged hospitals to use models with disposable parts and had called on manufacturers to produce fully disposable models.