AAMI
Research has shown that washing donned medical gloves with liquid cleaning solutions before removal can reduce the risk of health care workers contracting their patients’ infectious disease, especially during lengthy shifts or public health emergencies. However, little attention has been lent to the minutiae of this decontamination process. Now, new research funded by the U.S. FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) has revealed which materials and methods for decontaminating gloves may be most effective for keeping clinicians safe.
Dawson et al, “Evaluation of Glove Performance after Decontamination,” is published in BI&T, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation’s peer-reviewed journal of health technology and sterilization.
“Based on the test data presented, it appears that glove barrier performance is related to glove material, treatment, and number of treatments,” reported the study’s authors, a team hailing from the CDRH’s Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories. “Among the four decontamination methods evaluated, treatment with ABHS appeared to have the greatest impact on the glove’s barrier property.”
ABHS (alcohol-based hand sanitizers) were tested alongside commercial hand soap and water, 10% commercial bleach, and quaternary ammonium solutions. These cleaning methods were also tested against seven types of gloves commonly found in the clinical setting.
Vinyl medical gloves were “poor candidates for decontamination” the research revealed, as the material was found to quickly degrade and fail when exposed to the various solutions after a single wash. Conversely, Latex surgical and exam gloves alike served as passable barriers against infection even after a 10th wash. The researchers determined that surgical gloves were particularly resilient, perhaps due to their higher thickness specification than your average examination glove.
“Although this work investigated the detection of holes in gloves, other studies would need to be conducted for proof of viability of decontamination methods paired with each glove type, including microbiological studies, tensile strength and elongation,” the study authors noted. “Also, if a specific microorganism of concern is targeted, appropriate selection of decontamination method and contact time needs to be established.”
So, why wash one’s gloves in the first place? After all, medical gloves are usually replaced between patients like most “single-use” personal protective equipment (PPE).
The recommendation to wash your gloves before doffing them originated from the 2014 Ebola outbreaks in West Africa – the largest the world has ever seen, according to the World Health Organization. During the two years these outbreaks held global attention, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) suggested that health care workers decontaminate their gloves before removal as an extra precaution to prevent the spread of Ebola and other deadly, infectious diseases. Then, during the COVID-19 world heath crisis, exceptionally lengthy shifts, shortages of PPE, and the emergency reuse of “single-use” PPE in some hospitals reignited discussions about the self-contamination risks associated with the donning and doffing of PPE.
“After a medical glove is decontaminated, it is no longer considered a medical glove; to date, no medical glove has been approved or cleared for reuse,” the researchers warned. “CDC and FDA do not endorse the reuse of medical gloves. However, if extreme shortage of gloves occurs or if decontamination is needed after working with pathogenic organisms, baseline data of glove performance related to specific decontamination method would be useful.”
