Prevent Intraoperative Infections

Anesthesia wash your hands and clean under your fingernails!

A person is holding a syringe in their hand.

Why

Hand washing is the single most effective way to prevent the spread of infections. Many studies show that the bacteria that causes infections are often spread from one patient to another on the hands of healthcare workers Infections obtained in the hospital can cause grave harm and increased costs. According to the CDC Healthcare acquired infections are responsible for 90,000 patient deaths in the United States each year. The treatment of these infections costs more than $4.5 billion per year. Sadly, although the use of hand gel and gloves is commonplace, anesthesia providers rarely wash their hands with soap and water at the beginning of their shift or clean under their fingernails. It must be asked, what bacteria hides under fingernails? Always glance at your operating teams’ fingernails and make sure they are clean. Ask them if they washed their hands with soap and water and cleaned under their fingernails.

This is an excerpt from the article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC9631600/ “Efforts must be made to protect patients from environmental exposure of bacteria within the operating room (OR) as well as preventing anesthesia providers from becoming vectors for intraoperative bacterial transmission. Research shows that contamination of the anesthesia work area is both rapid and widespread. Birnbach et al. found that after a 6-min simulated intubation sequence where a fluorescent dye was placed in the mannequin’s oral cavity, there was dye present on IV hubs in 100% of the scenarios, in addition to the medication syringes, anesthesia keyboard, and OR door handle in the majority of cases [33]. Other studies have evaluated how this crosscontamination affects patient care and outcomes. Loftus et al. found that there is an overall increase in bacterial contamination during the administration of general anesthesia, which led to IV stopcock contamination in 32% of cases, an increase in postoperative VRE sepsis, and an increase in mortality [34]. The same author concluded in a subsequent study that as many as 16% of 30-day postoperative infections were caused by bacterial transmission from the anesthesia work area [8].”

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What You Can Do

  1. Always glance at your operating teams’ fingernails and make sure they are clean. Ask them if they washed their hands with soap and water and cleaned under their fingernails prior to caring for you.
  2. Require that alcohol swabs are used to wipe your IV ports before each use 
  3. Insist that you be kept warm in the operating room. Research shows that low body temperatures could be related to increased infections
A person is pouring liquid into a glass.

Articles to Read

For further insights and information on perioperative blood pressure management and its impact on patient outcomes, consider exploring the following articles:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8394549/ #:~:text=Inadvertent perioperative hypothermia, defined as a drop in,it prolongs post-operative recovery [ 6, 7].
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/rr/rr5116.pdf
https://iscut.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Hand-washing.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8606715/