Innovative Methods of Hospital Disinfection in Prevention of Healthcare-Associated Infections

Abstract

The purpose of this review is to give the reader an update on recent studies and developments regarding the hospital environment role in transmission of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), and novel strategies to obtain a cleaner, safer patient environment. Hospital patient rooms are increasingly recognized as a reservoir of multi-drug-resistant organisms that contribute to HAIs. In simulated environments, surfaces can easily be adequately disinfected of pathogenic bacteria. However, translation into real healthcare settings has been less reliable and efficacious, with barriers to implementation of best practices. In this review, we describe and compare new and evolving technologies for enhancing room disinfection, such as UV-C, hydrogen peroxide vapor, ozone, and chlorine. We also review recent studies examining antimicrobial surfaces such as copper and silver and introduce a novel transdisciplinary human factors, systems engineering, and infection prevention approach to improve manual room cleaning. We highlight outstanding questions, including additional benefit of no touch technology in a human factors-optimized manual cleaning setting, and cost-effectiveness of optimized manual cleaning vs additional of no touch technology. There are evolving technologies and strategies to enhance patient room cleaning and decrease risk of HAI transmission. It is important for the infection prevention community to keep up to date with, and understand the implications of, these developments so as to best inform hospital HAI reduction strategy.