An innovative method for disinfecting the stethoscope membrane: A pilot Study

Epidemiology (Sunnyvale) 2015 volume 5 Issue 3 ISSN: 2161-1165, ECR an open access journal Epidemiology-2015 August 04-06, 2015 Notes: August 04-06, 2015 Valencia, Spain 3rd International Conference on Epidemiology & Public Health An innovative method for disinfecting the stethoscope membrane: A pilot study Andrea Serafini1, G Messina1, S Burgassi¹, D Messina2, N Nante1 and G Cevenini1 1University of Siena, Italy 2Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Italy Background: The literature demonstrated that stethoscope, the most used medical device, can be more contaminated than hands. There is a big concern on disinfecting the health professional hands, contrarily, lack of time and attention make the stethoscope disinfection quite rare, although it should be disinfected before every visit. This pilot study, evaluates an innovative solution for stethoscopes’ membrane disinfection in a real environment. Methods: An ultraviolet (UV) device was used for disinfecting the membrane of the stethoscope head. When the device couples the stethoscope head, an UV-C LED (wavelength 280 nm) automatically lights up to disinfect the stethoscope membrane. The device’s effectiveness was tested on a stethoscope used on 10 volunteers. The stethoscope was used for hearing the heart and respiratory sounds twice. The first time the stethoscope was treated with the UV device which irradiated its membrane for 5 minutes and then it was placed on Petri dishes to detect Colony Forming Units (CFU) at 36°C after 24 hours; the second time, the stethoscope membrane, was directly placed on petri dishes for obtaining matching controls. Petri dishes of treated/not treated stethoscope were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Statistical significance was set at 95%. Results: 5 out of 10 cases had a low bacterial contamination on control petri dishes (CFU 3 to 35) and the corresponding UV-C treated ones did not have any bacterial growth. On average, overall bacterial reduction was 91.7% (p<0.05). Conclusions: The device was able to sterilize membrane with low bacterial load and significantly reduce microbial presence in the others.