The efficacy of self-disinfecting bedrail covers in an intensive care unit.

BACKGROUND: Hospital surfaces are considered important vectors in the spread of nosocomial pathogens. This study evaluated microbial counts on novel antimicrobial bedrail covers over a 2-week period in a critical care environment. METHODS: Disposable bedrail covers (Aionx Inc, Hershey, PA) made of a copper and silver polymer and capable of conducting an imperceptible surface potential, were installed in a case-control manner on a series of occupied intensive care unit beds. Seventeen bedrails were covered with the study bedrail surface, and 17 were left uncovered. Two hundred seventy-two microbial surface cultures were obtained from both study and control bedrails and analyzed for microbial growth by bacterial enumeration and speciation. RESULTS: The bedrails covered with the study surface demonstrated >80% average decrease in colony forming units across the study period of 15 days. CONCLUSIONS: These novel, detachable bedrail covers successfully demonstrated significant bacterial count reduction in an intensive care unit setting. This may have implications for acquisition of hospital-acquired infections.

Developing an engineered antimicrobial/prophylactic system using electrically activated bactericidal metals.

The increased use of Residual Hardware Devices (RHDs) in medicine combined with antimicrobial resistant-bacteria make it critical to reduce the number of RHD associated osteomyelitic infections. This paper proposes a surface treatment based on ionic emission to create an antibiotic environment that can significantly reduce RHD associated infections. The Kirby-Bauer agar gel diffusion technique was adopted to examine the antimicrobial efficacy of eight metals and their ionic forms against seven microbes commonly associated with osteomyelitis. Silver ions (Ag(+)) showed the most significant bactericidal efficacy. A second set of experiments, designed to identify the best configuration and operational parameters for Ag(+) based RHDs addressed current and ionic concentrations by identifying and optimizing parameters including amperage, cathode and anode length, separation between anode and cathode, and surface charge density. The system demonstrated an unparalleled efficacy. The concept was then implemented during in vitro testing of an antimicrobial hip implant, RHD.