Professional paper
Hygiene evaluation of hospital textiles
Urška Rozman
orcid.org/0000-0002-5947-1937
; University of Maribor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Maribor, Slovenia
Sabina Fijan
; University of Maribor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Maribor, Slovenia
Sonja Šostar Turk
; University of Maribor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Maribor, Slovenia
Abstract
Inappropriately disinfected hospital textiles can act as a vector for cross transmission of healthcare associated infections, which represent complications in the treatment of patients and cause economic damage. Through the surveillance program that includes controlling the hygiene and sampling of cleaned healthcare textiles, nosocomial infections are considered to be preventable. Until now various types of textile sampling methods were divided into non-destructive and destructive methods, which vary depending on the state of the fabric at the end of the process. In our research, the Morapex A device as a non-destructive elution based method, was introduced for textile hygiene testing. The efficiency of Morapex A device was compared to the swabbing and RODAC agar plate sampling as most common used methods for sampling of textiles. The low efficiency of capturing microorganisms due to the rough, uneven three-dimensional fabric surface turned out to be the downside of the swabbing and RODAC plate method. The Morapex A device has proved to be a better implementation and an adequate substitute for non-destructive textile hygiene testing.
Keywords
hospital textiles; hygiene; cleaned healthcare textiles; textile hygiene testing; testing methods
Hrčak ID:
166521
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2015.
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