ADVERTORIAL
Is your hand sanitiser actually doing the job it’s supposed to?
The potential increases in institutional bioburden caused by this effect should be understood by clinical staff who can then review their own practice to determine if the use of alcohol gels is safe in their practice. It is proposed that current recommendations should be reviewed and possibly changed to avoid potential harm to both patients and staff. Any changes to current recommendations may also have significant financial implications to healthcare providers. Despite that fact that alcohol hand gels are
ubiquitous throughout healthcare and the food industry amongst others, their effective use is not understood. The dangers of this are evident especially within healthcare and hospital acquired infections. The results of these studies raise the questions:
“What is occurring to cause this unexpected outcome?” and based on these results “Should the WHO make changes to the recommendations on the use of alcohol gels in our hospitals?” It is the view of the authors that clinicians should be involved in the decisions related to hand hygiene practice in their own area of practice, with guidance and support given from Infection control teams.
A
t the Education Show this year, the Q Technologies group of companies,
a world leading group of companies manufacturing products for Infection prevention and control, was on hand to explain the extent of its research into the effectiveness of alcohol hand sanitisers, particularly with regard to the significant increase in skin bacterial counts which occurs after an hour of applying alcohol gel to the hands, and the potential harm which use of alcohol gel can cause. Dr Andrew Kemp, Principle Scientific
Officer for the Q Technologies group of companies, explains what the research found, and offers some conclusions and recommendations for those institutions such as schools and colleges which regularly use alcohol gel to sanitise hands.
Alcohol hand sanitisers are recommended for use by many healthcare organisations across the world, including the World Health Organisation (WHO). A multi-centre “real time” study of Colony Forming Unit (CFU) counts on human skin now shows that this advice may actually be detrimental. Until recently the effects of alcohol gels on skin
bacterial counts over extended time periods have been overlooked. After an extensive literature search revealed no published studies on the effects of alcohol gel on skin for any periods of time over 10 minutes, an initial pilot study showed an unexpected result leading to a study on a much larger sample group. The results of this study show that alcohol gel reduces bacterial counts initially, however after one hour it causes a significant increase in skin bacterial counts when compared to washing with soap and water only.
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www.education-today.co.uk April 2018
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