Chemical apparatus and process disinfecting – deodorizing – preser – Process disinfecting – preserving – deodorizing – or sterilizing – Using direct contact with electrical or electromagnetic...
Patent
1994-06-15
1996-03-12
Warden, Robert J.
Chemical apparatus and process disinfecting, deodorizing, preser
Process disinfecting, preserving, deodorizing, or sterilizing
Using direct contact with electrical or electromagnetic...
25045511, 34275, 34549, 34565, 34572, 34 82, 392380, A61L 210, F26B 2106
Patent
active
054983940
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Medical health care workers, such as physicians, nurses, dentists and paramedics, constantly come into contact with infectious micro-organisms (viruses, bacteria, and spores) or body fluids containing such micro organisms. For example, medical health care workers in hospitals are routinely exposed to extremely dangerous and persistent pathogens such as Hepatitis B, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Candida, Listeria, Tuberculosis and viruses causing human immunodeficiency (HIV). Many pathogens, including the above listed micro-organisms, are carrier transient between non-infected and infected persons. Many of such pathogens can be transmitted by simple contact, such as on the hands of medical personnel. Thus, the risk of transmission exists even when the medical health care workers contact arises from non-invasive procedures.
Medical health care workers are constantly required to exchange their time and service between patients. Due to comparatively recent changes in the medical environment affecting the presence of lethal pathogens such as the appearance of HIV, the routine of patient contact is increasingly risk-laden for both the medical health care worker and his patients. If the medical care worker's hands and forearms are not properly cleaned or covered, the worker can act as a transmitter of the disease between patients or become a receiver of the disease himself. The wearing of gloves and hand washing with germicidal agents are the only personal disciplines for protection against such transmissions.
Hand washing is a method of germicidal cleansing which attempts to reduce pathogens on the hand to insignificant levels by trying to either kill or remove a significant percentage of them. Gloves are a barrier protection between the wearer and the patient. The gloves become contaminated through use, including contact with any non-sterilized surface. Thus the process of removing and replacing gloves is itself a contaminative one for the hands and lower arms. Hands should never be gloved, ungloved or re-gloved without germicidal cleansing. Accordingly, today's routine medical procedure, particularly in hospitals, requires a very high incidence of health care worker hand washing. In a normal day, medical health care workers do such hand washing between twenty and a hundred times.
Since many lethal micro-organisms are difficult to remove or destroy, simple washing techniques are not foolproof. Protocols for washing are not always completely followed. Pathogens can and do survive hand washing. The frequency of contact and exposure in health care facilities increase the likelihood of contagion through such residual contamination.
In addition, frequent hand washing creates problems of failing skin integrity due to the skin's intolerance to repeated use of anti-microbial chemicals and detergent soaps. Such failing skin integrity seriously increases the risk of infection of the health care worker and transmittal by the health care worker of infection between patients. The use of emollients to protect skin integrity defeats the antimicrobial cleansing and acts to contaminate the medical care worker's hands.
Hand washing protocols can be routinely maintained within medical care facilities, where sinks and disinfectants are a few steps away. However, a different situation exists outside such facilities. In ambulances, in rescue and fire trucks, in field clinics, and in police emergency vehicles, there are no such facilities. Remaining germicidally clean by conventional hand washing techniques is extremely difficult, if not impossible, in such environments. However, it is in these very environments that there is a particularly high-risk of pathogen contact-exposure.
It has long been recognized that pathogens can be destroyed in the air, in water or on exposed surfaces if they are irradiated with ultraviolet light at the wavelength of 253.7 nanometers. However, use of such ultraviolet light for germicidal cleansing has been severely restricted. It has been used to treat air or wate
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Dawson E. Leigh
MolecuCare, Inc.
Warden Robert J.
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