Comparison of efficacy of hand washing with Betadin and Sterillium on bacterial colony count in intensive care unit personnel

Nosocomial infections are common with known complications and high mortality and morbidity rate. There are several efficient and quick-acting antiseptic alcohol solutions such as Sterillium that require no scrubbing. The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of betadin and Sterillium hand rubs for hand disinfection in a before-after trial according to prEN12054 prEN 1500.

We compared Betadin and Sterillium hand rubbing for hand disinfection in a before-after study. The study was done with 72 healthy ICU staff, whose hand microbial flora were measured before and after 30 seconds Hands washing with Betadin and Sterillium. Sampling was achieved according to the stratified randomization. Samples cultured on BA and EMB media and the frequency of microorganisms and the efficacy of two agents were determined. Then we compared results of Betadin and Sterillium by using Chi square and Fisher,s Exact and McNemar tests.

The most frequent pathogens were staph epidermidis (32), aerobacter aerogenosa (4), staph saprofiticus (3), pseudomona (1), klebsiella (1), acintobacter (1), and E.coli (1). The percentage of organism reduction following the usage of antibacterial agents was 94% for betadin and 87% for Sterillium (P=0.8). This reduction was significant statistically. We did not find significant difference about sex, ward, shift and job before and after washing with regard to Betadin, but in Sterillum we found significant difference(P=0.04) only after rubbing. The rate of negative culture about Betadin was more than Sterillium but was not statistically significant.

Since skin is a routine source of infections transmission, and with respect to the satisfactory results, we advise the usage of this agent for ICU staff for hand disinfection.