Abstract
The outbreak of surgical site infections is a serious postoperative complication. Surgical site infections are caused by various reasons, one of which is insufficient hand washing during surgery.
We introduced a waterless hand washing method for surgery, and investigated clinical and medical viability.
We compared the number outbreaks of surgical site infections (SSI), time of hand washing, degree of hand roughness, costs, and bacteria detection rate by finger culture inspection during a six-month period from March to August in 2008 after introducing the waterless method with the six-month period before it.
The results showed that the waterless method does not differ from conventional hand washing methods and is also medically cost-effective.
