Effectiveness of Ultraviolet Radiation and Disinfectant Wipes in Reducing the Microbial Contamination of Mobile Phones in a Tertiary Care Hospital.

Background As mobile phones act as a potential source of microbial contamination, particularly in a hospital environment, the effectiveness of two most debated interventions namely ultraviolet radiation and disinfectant wipes in reducing the microbial contamination of mobile phones is compared. Objective To screen the mobile phones of healthcare personnel for the presence of microorganisms and to compare the effectiveness of ultraviolet radiation and disinfectant wipes in reducing microbial contamination. Methods and materials Pre-intervention and post-intervention swabs were collected before and after the use of each intervention respectively using 56 samples and cultured for growth in nutrient agar. Agar plates are subjected to quantitative analysis using bacterial colony count to reflect the efficacy of the specific intervention used. The data collected was entered in Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, USA) and analysis was done using standard statistical packages. Results While comparing the pre-intervention bacterial load with the post-intervention load, post-intervention bacterial contamination in terms of colony-forming units/CFU has drastically reduced after both interventions, which is validated by statistical significance. However, it was observed participants using disinfectant wipes as intervention had 2.07 times higher chance of having a low bacterial load which wasn't statistically significant. Conclusion Our study shows that with the use of any intervention from the above-mentioned interventions, bacterial load or bacterial contamination can be reduced significantly, thus pointing out that both ultraviolet radiation and disinfectant wipes are effective in reducing contamination of mobile phones. It was also found that male doctors have more bacterial load than females, which can be minimized by effectively changing behavioral habits.