No-Touch Automated Disinfection System for Decontamination of Surfaces in Hospitals

Patryk Tarka and Aneta Nitsch-Osuch
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Patryk Tarka: Department of Social Medicine and Public Health, Medical University of Warsaw, Oczki 3, 02-007 Warsaw, Poland
Aneta Nitsch-Osuch: Department of Social Medicine and Public Health, Medical University of Warsaw, Oczki 3, 02-007 Warsaw, Poland

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 14, 1-10

Abstract: Background: Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) remain a common problem, which suggests that standard decontamination procedures are insufficient. Thus, new methods of decontamination are needed in hospitals. Methods: We assessed the effectiveness of a no-touch automated disinfection (NTD) system in the decontamination of 50 surfaces in 10 hospital rooms. Contamination of surfaces was assessed with a microbiological assay and an ATP bioluminescence assay. Unacceptable contamination was defined as > 100 colony forming units/100 cm 2 in the microbiological assay, and as ≥ 250 relative light units in the ATP assay. Results: When measured with the microbiological assay, 11 of 50 surfaces had unacceptable contamination before NTD, and none of the surfaces had unacceptable contamination after NTD ( p < 0.001). On the ATP bioluminescence assay, NTD decreased the number of surfaces with unacceptable contamination from 28 to 13, but this effect was non-significant ( p = 0.176). On the microbiological assay taken before NTD, the greatest contamination exceeded the acceptable level by more than 11-fold (lamp holder, 1150 CFU/100 cm 2 ). On the ATP bioluminescence assay taken before NTD, the greatest contamination exceeded the acceptable level by more than 43-fold (Ambu bag, 10,874 RLU). Conclusion: NTD effectively reduced microbiological contamination in all hospital rooms. However, when measured with the ATP bioluminescence assay, the reduction of contamination was not significant.

Keywords: no-touch automated disinfection; hospital-acquired infections; peroxone; ATP bioluminescence assay; microbiological assay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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