HOSPITAL & MEDICAL – NON-CONTACT CLEANING
Clean break
On the face of it, non-contact cleaning of hospitals and healthcare facilities –
by employing, for example, nebuliser technology, or ultraviolet light – sounds
more hygienic than wiping and washing. But is it as effective?
When it comes to
By Ian Vallely
cleanliness, Queen
Elizabeth I (1558-1603)
set us all a good example.
She took a bath at least
once every three months ‘whether she
needeth it or not’. In the same way, it makes
sense for cleaning professionals to ensure
that hospitals are cleaned regularly, whether
they appear to need it or not.
A failure to do so can result in a
Pandora’s Box of nasty bugs. But this begs a
fundamental question – how best to ensure
that this container remains closed? The
answer is to thoroughly clean, disinfect and
decontaminate every surface frequently.
A host of horrifying statistics point to
the pressing need to curb infections in
healthcare facilities. It has, for example,
been estimated that 300,000 patients
develop a healthcare-associated infection
in England every year, with 5,000 of those
cases proving fatal. And a staggering
3.5 million Europeans contract an
infection while in hospital every year,
with around 2.5 million (equivalent to the
combined population of Birmingham and
Wolverhampton) dying or being seriously
debilitated annually as a result, according
to research from the European Centre for
Disease Prevention and Control.
LOOKING TO LIGHT
A recent study by Duke University in the
United States found that adding shortwavelength
ultraviolet-C light (UVC)
to standard room cleaning strategies
decreased hospital-wide incidence of
two common healthcare-associated
infections.
The randomised controlled trial
conducted at nine hospitals in the south
eastern US found that enhanced terminal
room disinfection with UVC in a subset of
rooms, previously occupied by patients
colonised or infected with multidrugresistant
organisms (MDROs), led to a
decrease in hospital-wide incidence of
Clostridium difficile and vancomycinresistant
enterococci (VRE).
The study, funded by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, adopted
four strategies – standard disinfection;
standard disinfection and disinfecting
UVC; bleach; and bleach and UVC.
The UVC device used in the study
was a machine that emits a lethal dose
of UV light into an empty hospital room.
The light waves kill bacteria by disrupting
the molecular bonds that hold their DNA
together. Overall, there was no significant
difference between the standard cleaning
method and the enhanced methods for
hospital-wide risk of target organism
acquisition of all target organisms.
But of all the enhanced cleaning
methods, the decrease in risk was greatest
during the UVC study period compared
with the reference period. The researchers
suggested there were several explanations
for how enhanced disinfection of targeted
rooms with UV light could lead to a
decrease in hospital-wide acquisition of
MDROs.
By reducing pathogens in targeted
rooms, enhanced disinfection cuts down
on the potential for subsequent patients
in those rooms, and adjacent rooms, to
become infected or colonized. And since
patients with one type of MDRO are
often colonised with other MDROs, an
intervention targeting a specific organism,
26 www.operationsengineer.org.uk June 2019
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