Hospital Textiles, Are They a Possible Vehicle for Healthcare-Associated Infections?

Sabina Fijan and Sonja Šostar Turk
Additional contact information
Sabina Fijan: Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Maribor, Žitna ulica 15, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia
Sonja Šostar Turk: Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Maribor, Žitna ulica 15, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

IJERPH, 2012, vol. 9, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: Textiles are a common material in healthcare facilities; therefore it is important that they do not pose as a vehicle for the transfer of pathogens to patients or hospital workers. During the course of use hospital textiles become contaminated and laundering is necessary. Laundering of healthcare textiles is most commonly adequate, but in some instances, due to inappropriate disinfection or subsequent recontamination, the textiles may become a contaminated inanimate surface with the possibility to transfer pathogens. In this review we searched the published literature in order to answer four review questions: (1) Are there any reports on the survival of microorganisms on hospital textiles after laundering? (2) Are there any reports that indicate the presence of microorganisms on hospital textiles during use? (3) Are there any reports that microorganisms on textiles are a possible source infection of patients? (4) Are there any reports that microorganisms on textiles are a possible source infection for healthcare workers?

Keywords: textile hygiene; disinfection; hospital-acquired infections; inanimate surfaces; infection transmission vehicles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/9/3330/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/9/3330/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:9:y:2012:i:9:p:3330-3343:d:20105

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().