An investigation of the factors that affect surgical hand disinfection with polyvidone iodine.

This study investigated the factors influencing the effectiveness of 7.5% polyvidone iodine as a surgical antiseptic. The study involved 100 operating staff (75 doctors and 25 nurses) from hospital surgical teams. Fingertips of both hands of the subjects were pressed on to agar culture before and after washing and after completion of surgery. Handwashing lasting for more than 3 min led to a significant decrease in the number of colonies compared with handwashing lasting for less than 3 min. Moreover, the number of colonies was significantly higher when surgery lasted for longer than 95 min. However, the handwashing style (with or without brushing) was not found to have a significant effect on the outcome of the disinfection procedure in terms of bacterial colonization. Subjects who had colonization of their hands after surgery were found to have significantly higher colony counts before handwashing compared with those who did not have any colonization on their hands after surgery. The results of this study revealed that in order to attain effective disinfection with polyvidone iodine, the duration of handwashing should be at least 3 min. The risk of recolonization increases when the duration of surgery exceeds 95 min.

Genotype distribution of Candida albicans isolates by 25S intron analysis with regard to invasiveness.

The aim of this study was to genotype Candida albicans strains isolated from patients with invasive and non-invasive deep-seated infections. For this purpose, 301 C. albicans isolates (81 invasive and 220 non-invasive) were genotyped by using specific PCR primers designed to span the transposable group I intron of the 25S rDNA gene. Fifty-three of the 81 invasive isolates were genotype A (65.4%), eight were genotype B (9.9%) and 20 were genotype C (24.7%), while 98 of the 220 non-invasive isolates were genotype A (44.6%), 46 were genotype B (20.9%) and 76 were genotype C (34.5%). Genotype A was more prevalent among invasive isolates and genotypes B and C were more prevalent among non-invasive isolates (P = 0.0046). Genotypes D and E which represent C. dubliniensis were not found. These results indicate that there may be a relationship between C. albicans genotypes and invasiveness; genotype A being more invasive than others. The presence or absence of the transposable group I intron in the 25S rDNA gene may be important in determining the invasiveness of C. albicans.