The most common surgical gloves used at the Royal Hobart Hospital areud'Individually Tested' (IT) gloves, in which each glove is tested for leaks by theudmanufacturer prior to sterilization and packaging. A cheaper brand of glove isudavailable in which sample gloves from manufactured batches are tested for leaksud(BT), but not each glove. The latter gloves were widely rejected by surgeons onudthe theoretical ground that there would be more perforations, and consequentlyudmore wound infection and greater exposure of staff to patient pathogens.udHowever no objective study had been done to test this conjecture.udThe aims of this study were to compare the integrity of the two brands of glovesudby mechanical and microbiological methods, and to compare the incidence of postoperativeudwound infection following the use of either brand.ud110 unused gloves of each brand were tested for leaks. 318 IT and 278 BT glovesudwere then tested after clean surgery, for mechanical leaks. Scrub-team member'sudgloves and hands were cultured post-surgery. Wound infection rates wereudcompared.udThe pre-use perforation rate was not significantly different. The macroperforationudrate for if gloves was slightly but statistically significantly higher than for BTudgloves, and no bias in types of operations or in staff members could be uncoveredudto account for this.udGrowth of normal skin flora was found on virtually every wearer's hands afterudremoval of gloves, suggesting a failure of current scrub techniques or solutions toudeliminate skin flora. Furthermore these bacteria were commonly cultured from theudoutside of the gloves at the conclusion of surgery, indicating development ofudmicroporosity of the glove-latex during surgery. There was a statisticallyudsignificant difference in the glove outer-surface bacterial detection rates betweenudthe brands (BT>IT) indicating a difference in latex properties between brands. It isudsuggested that a standardized form of this test could be developed as a qualityudmeasure of surgical gloves.udA final finding was the absence of translation of macroperforation rates orudbacterial culture rates into morbidity as measured by wound infection. It could beudconcluded that for this type of surgery, the detected glove differences areudirrelevant with regard to patient morbidity. However caution is suggested inudextending these findings to situations of known patient infectivity (eg. HIV orudviral hepatitis) or to cases where Am contamination could be a serious problemud(eg. joint surgery or neurosurgery). The data adds weight to the strategy of doubleudgloving.
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