Major articleA prospective multicenter study evaluating skin tolerance to standard hand hygiene techniques
Section snippets
Study population
This French prospective study was conducted in a large population in 9 health care facilities. Staff were surveyed and assessed during their day-to-day work in two distinct periods, winter and summer. The study was conducted in staff comprising about two-thirds health care workers (HCWs) (eg, nurses, medicotechnical staff, doctors, students) and one-third non-HCW personnel (eg, secretaries, biomedical services, administration, laundry, hostesses, dieticians). The variables collected for each
Population characteristics
The study yielded a total of 1932 observations collected in the participating institutions: 1175 (60.8%) evaluations for the winter investigation (mean temperature, 10.1°C; mean precipitation, 72 mm) and 757 (39.2%) evaluations for the summer investigation (mean temperature, 24.2°C; mean precipitation, 16 mm). The Cannes General Hospital collected 885 cases (46%), the Antoine Lacassagne Cancer Center in Nice collected 257 cases (13%), the University Hospital of Nice collected 252 cases (13%),
Discussion
This prospective multicenter study evaluated the cutaneous adverse reactions induced by hand hygiene techniques. To the best of our knowledge, no wide multicenter study taking into account most of the individual and environmental risk factors for skin conditions has proven the benefits of ABHR.5, 16, 17, 18, 19 In univariate analysis, the use of an ABHR appeared to cause less dryness and less irritation than soap. This trend in favor of ABHR was confirmed by multivariate analysis, which even
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2022, American Journal of Infection ControlCitation Excerpt :When it comes to personal acceptability, most of surgeons preferred using ABHR rather then PVP-I or CHX. These findings corroborate what have been found by others and confirms that alcohol-based surgical hand preparation is a very safe procedure for both the patient and the surgeon.19-25 That adds to many other advantages of handrubbing with ABHR over the traditional handscrubbing, including greater antimicrobial efficacy, easier application, time saving, and being more environmental-friendly.
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All of the authors belong to AzurCLIN and Riviera-CLIN, two networks devoted to combating nosocomial infections in the Alpes-Maritimes region of France.
Conflicts of interests: None to report.