Abstract
In surgical hand disinfection, the waterless method (a procedure to use alcohol-based hand rub) is becoming widely used replacing conventional two methods-the scrub method (a procedure to use antiseptics containing cleaning agent) and the two-stage method (a procedure to use alcohol-based hand rub after scrub method). We compared the waterless method with other 2 methods (scrub method and two-stage method) in terms of disinfection effect and cost so that we could evaluate the usefulness of the waterless method using the alcohol-based hand rub (STERICLON HAND LOTION 0.5%) containing 0.5w/v% chlorhexidine gluconate. We obtained a result that the reduction rate (%) of viable count by the waterless method reached 94.8% (p<0.05), which showed that the waterless method significantly effective for the surgical hand disinfection compared with the scrub method or with the two-stage method. Moreover, the waterless method showed persistent effect. In addition, the waterless method made it possible to reduce cost by more than 150 yen per one surgical hand disinfection compared with the scrub method or with the two-stage method. Based on the above result, the waterless method to use the alcohol-based hand rub containing 0.5w/v% chlorhexidine gluconate proved to have both excellent disinfection and cost-reducing effect compared with the scrub method or with the two-stage method.
