Examination of Surgical Glove Perforation after Surgery Using a Highly Precise Electrical : Impedance Method

Abstract

In this study, we collected 376 surgical gloves after surgery in nine departments by random sampling, and examined them for presence of perforation. Highly precise, high-resistance electrical-impedance measurement was made using a three-terminal device. This method was previously developed to accurately evaluate surgical-glove perforations. We divided gloves into three groups according to impedance measurements: high-resistance (approximately 100 MΩ, n=312), medium-resistance (approximately 1MΩ, n=10), and low-resistance (approximately 10Ω, n=54). The association between operation time and conversion-resistance values displayed a progressively increasing incidence of the groups of medium- and low-resistance values for surgical times exceeding 2h (below 2h: 0%, 2h-4h: 16.5%, 4-6h: 26.8%, 6-8h: 33.4%). In addition, results demonstrated that the incidence of medium- and low-resistance values was particularly high in gloves from departments that frequently use surgical instruments and equipment, which presumably result in a high rate of glove perforation.