Impact of Protective Footwear on Floor and Air Contamination of Intensive Care Units

Abstract

Floor and air colony counts showed no significant difference in the two phases with and without protective footwear. Protective footwear had no significant impact on bacterial contamination of floors.

Bacterial Contamination of Intensive Care Units at a Tertiary Hospital in Bauchi, Northeastern Nigeria

“…Evaluating the exogenous effect to bacterial contamination in ICU, Gupta et al study on the impact of footwear as protective measure against contamination, the study recorded no significance difference between the contamination rate and the footwear [6] In this study, we isolated 10 different bacterial pathogens, Bacillus spp, 33.8%(n=24), S.aureus, 26.8% (n=19 ) and CoNS 19.7%(n=14), and predominate in both units, indoor contamination 51.7%(n=15)in AICU,and 47.6%(n=20) in NICU and surface items/equipments contamination 48.3%(n=14) and 35.7%(n=15) respectively. Other studies have reported the predominance of staphylococci and Bacillus spp [5,6,18,22,23,31]. The recovery of potentially clinically relevant S.aureus CoNs, E.coli,.…”

“…Contamination occurs via cross-transmission and dissemination, occupancy density, usage of medical equipment for multiple patient like stethoscope, gowns and clothing [5][6][7][8], colonized/ infected health care worker/patient, their accessories and clinical specimens [9][10][11]. Nonadherence of health care worker to simple standard procedure of hand washing, contribute significantly to the spread of pathogens, and cross-transmission during contact with patient or contaminated inanimate surfaces [12,13].…”

“…Human skin is known to harbour significant proportion of bacteriastaphylococci, gram-negative that are shed continuously during clinical activities [14]. Another source of contamination is colonised and infected health care worker and patients in which the pathogens can be shed and recovered from the immediate environment of the patient [14][15][16], while the dispersion depends on type of organism, source and contamination with the surface, humidity level and size of the inoculum [11,17] Wide range of bacterial pathogens have been implicated in ICU contamination, but potentially clinically relevant ones includes S.aureus, coagulase negative staphylococci, Enterobactericiae, Enterococci, as major causative agent of nosocomial infection, emerged as multidrug resistant pathogens(MDR) and compound infection control [5,[18][19][20][21]. These MDR pathogens like MRSA, VRSA, ESBL producing Enterobacteriae and Acineobacter baumanii, are used as indicators organism for evaluating the level of adherence to basic standard procedures in intensive care units [11,13,24], as failure in these basic procedure tends to increase the dissemination these pathogens within the units and hospital environment.…”

Comparison of Floor Microbial Flora in Intensive Care Unit Set ups with vs without Shoes

“…Ecoli, pseudomonas, klebsiella and enterobacter species were sporadically isolated in their study. On an average individual sheds 10^6 squares per day (5,6) . Skin squames from patients and staff are likely to be staphylococcus epidermitis and other coagulase negative cocci and bacilli.…”

Antibiogram and Plasmid Profile of Bacterial Isolates from Intensive Care Units in a Tertiary Healthcare Facility in Umuahia

“…Such diseases can result because of different causes like advancement and determination of multidrugresistant (MDR) microbes, immune-compromised conditions of patients, and mechanical transmission of microorganisms [6]. Some non-basic therapeutic gadgets routinely utilized by healthcare workers (HCWs, for example, stethoscopes, pulse sleeves, electronic thermometers, latex gloves, covers, pens, and white coats assume a critical role in the transmission of health careassociated infections (HCAIs) [6]. Among these gadgets, stethoscopes routinely utilized by HCWs represent a potential risk for HCAIs transmission in the hospital settings [6].…”