MOVING ANNOUNCEMENT
We have moved our hand hygiene blog to another location. Our new site will give the chance to comment our posts and search older posts easier. We hope that these changes will bring us closer.
The Heritage of Semmelweis
2017.01.19.
The CEE Semmelweis Conference series was established two years ago to offer a high-standard professional event on Hospital Hygiene and Patient Safety in the CEE region. The second edition of the conference will be held in 2 months in Budapest. We summarize here the most important information and also look back to the key findings of the previous conference.
The first Semmelweis Conference was organized in 2015 in Vienna by the Semmelweis Foundation. The foundation was established in Vienna by a group of private people to raise public and political awareness to the threat of multi resistant bugs and the importance of hygiene in healthcare in order to save lives. The mission of the Foundation is to facilitate sharing best practices and learning from each other. Around 300 people attended the first Semmelweis Conference, titled „The Future of Infection Surveillance and Control“. Read more
Why We Need the Further Improvement of Current Standards?
2017.01.12.
Last time, we wrote about the two most important standards for testing the efficacy of handrubs; the European CEN EN 1500 and the American ASTM E-1174. Now we summarize the main weaknesses of these standards. The first issue with the EN 1500 and ASTM E-1174 is the cost. E-1174 needs a minimum of 54 test subjects for the in vivo test and another 54 for the positive control. In the case of EN 1500 the results could be intra-individually compared, thus reduce the sample size at the same statistical power [1]. The required hand treatments are 30 seconds for E-1174… Read more
How Do We Compare Handrubs?
2017.01.05.
Handrubs may have very different composition. There are several standards that can help us to compare the effectiveness of any products. The two most commonly used standard procedures are the EN 1500 standard (developed by CEN, the European Committee for Standardization) and the ASTM E-1174 standard (by the FDA’s Tentative Final Monograph – TFM) [1]. Both methods use experimental contamination on the hands, and counts log10 reduction in the number of colonies, but the performance criteria and the experiment parameters of the two standards are not exactly the same. It means, if a handrub formulation passes the ASTM E-1174, it… Read more
What Do Alcoholic Handrubs Contain?
2016.12.16.
Alcoholic handrubs are the primarily recommended hand hygiene tools according to all large professional organizations. (ABHR = Alcohol-based handrub, according to the WHO terminology.) These contain alcohol as active ingredient; ethanol, propan-1-ol, propan-2-ol or the combination of these. These three alcohols have several alternative names, some may sound more familiar: the alternative names are listed in Figure 1, along with their chemical structures. Read more
Alternatives for the WHO 6-step Protocol
2016.12.08.
Last time we wrote about the current 6-step hand hygiene protocol, which formed the base of the EN1500 and WHO hand hygiene recommendations. Figure 1: The 6-step from WHO ‘How to handrub’ and ‘How to handwash’ guide [1]. There are two problems with the 6-step protocol, that are often reported. First, it takes too long to perform. Kampf 2008 reported that performing the 6-steps protocol accurately lasts on average 75 s, while the guideline only requires 30 s. Second, according to several studies, 6 steps are too many to remember. In Silva 2014, healthcare professionals were asked about hand hygiene; 98.6%… Read more
How to Handrub?
2016.12.02.
Taylor 1978 examined the hand surface coverage during hand hygiene with alcohol, and found that 89% missed some parts of their hands. Missed parts were usually the thumbs and fingertips. Figure 1: Distribution of areas inadequately treated during hand washing in Taylor 1978 paper. Ayliffe 1978 described a procedure; a step-by-step guideline how to perform hand hygiene to reach complete coverage. This method consists of five strokes forwards and backwards in 6 different positions. It paid special attention to thumbs (step5) and fingertips (step6). In Bellamy 1993, te 6-step guideline is first referred to as a standard procedure. The 6-step… Read more
When Should We Perform Hand Hygiene?
2016.11.24.
There are several recommendations on the opportunities when health-care workers (HCW) should perform hand hygiene. Perhaps the most widely known guideline is the ‘My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene’ developed by the WHO.
