Abstract
BackgroundThe issue of safety in the surgical procedure has recently been widely and openly discussed at the World Health Organization. The use of latex gloves is the current standard of protection during surgery, as they remain intact throughout the procedure. The present study was designed to evaluate the rate of glove perforation during a two-hand technique using polyester sutures in a controlled experimental study.MethodsHypothesis was that the gloves used during a two-hand technique using polyester suture suffer punctures. We used 150 pairs of gloves during the experiment. Each investigator performed 30 tests always using double gloving. They made five surgical knots on each test over a custom-made table specifically developed for the experiment. Ten tests were done at a time with a week- interval. The Control Group (CG) has 30 pairs of intact surgical gloves. The gloves were tested to impermeability by water filling and leaking was observed at three different times. Statistics relating to the perforation rate were analyzed using the chi-square test. A P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.ResultsDuring the experiment there was no loss of gloves by drilling or inadvertent error in performing the impermeability test. No perforations were detected at any time during the impermeability test with the gloves used for sutures. Also, the CG presented no leakage of the liquid used for the test. There was no statistical difference between the groups underwent suture nor between them and the GC.ConclusionUnder the studied conditions, the authors’ hypotheses could not be proved. There was no damage to the surgical gloves during the entire experiment. The authors believe that the skin abrasions observed in the ulnar side of the little finger, constant throughout the experiment, must be caused by friction. We feel there is no risk of perforation of surgical gloves during a two-hand technique using polyester suture.
Highlights
The issue of safety in the surgical procedure has recently been widely and openly discussed at the World Health Organization (WHO) [1]
Because of its importance and because of the risk of perforation during surgery, the use of two gloves has generally been adopted by most surgical teams in numerous situations as a way to reduce the risk of perforation, this measure was not included in WHO recommendations on safety in surgery, since there are no sufficient studies to prove their efficacy [3,4,7,8]
No perforations were detected at any time during the impermeability test with the gloves used for sutures
Summary
The issue of safety in the surgical procedure has recently been widely and openly discussed at the World Health Organization (WHO) [1]. In this context, the contamination during the operative procedure has highlighted importance, since its occurrence potentially put at risk of infection to both the patient and staff that performs surgery. Some relatively simple procedures such as adequate preoperative evaluation in order to identify a pre-existing diseases and proper hand hygiene during asepsis moments before the procedure, are fundamental and can avoid more serious problems that may put lives at risk [1]. The use of latex gloves is the current standard of protection during surgery, as they remain intact throughout the procedure. The present study was designed to evaluate the rate of glove perforation during a two-hand technique using polyester sutures in a controlled experimental study
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