Impact of surface disinfection with hydrogen peroxide on the prevalence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) in hospital wards.

Vancomycin-resistant (VRE) are of major concern in infection control. Although broad infection control actions to check VRE have been implemented, VRE remain part of daily infection prevention in clinical settings. Cleaning procedures in the inanimate ward environment might play a key role in controlling VRE.

Overconfidence in infection control proficiency.

Background: Infection control partially depends on hygiene and communication skills. Unfortunately, motivation for continuous training is lower than desired. Many health care providers (HCPs) do not recognize the need for training but express this need for others.

Practice of skin protection and skin care among German surgeons and influence on the efficacy of surgical hand disinfection and surgical glove perforation.

Background: Surgical hand rub and healthy skin are basic requirements to prevent surgical site infections. Nevertheless, there is little knowledge about the current practice of skin protection and/or skin care products (SP/SC) using among surgeons as well as a lack of data pertaining to the influence of SP/SC on the antimicrobial efficacy of surgical hand rub.

Methods: A 10 weeks-survey among German surgeons as well as an experimental crossover study involving 26 participants were conducted.

Efficacy of two iso-propanol-based skin antiseptics applied to human skin with many sebaceous glands for 2 and 10 minutes.

Background: Recent research suggests that specific ethanol-based skin antiseptics exhibit their efficacy on the resident skin flora of the forehead in only 2.5 minutes. We have now looked at the efficacy of two skin antiseptics based on 63% (w/w) propan-2-ol (iso-propanol) and applied for 10 and 2 minutes on skin with a high density of sebaceous glands.