Preoperativ hud- desinfektion
Introduction. Infection Prevention is one of the surgical nurses' main responsibilities. One of the steps which patients undergo in this purpose before surgery is the preoperative skin desinfektion. Background. The patient washes the day before surgery with Descutan cutaneous sponge 4 %, a sponge containing chlorhexidine. Another skinn disinfection takes place directly before proceeding with surgery, where the surgical nurse disinfects the intended surgical site with chlorhexidine alcohol 5mg/ml. However, there is no consensus on how this application of chlorhexidine (a disinfectant method) should be undertaken, and there has never been investigated if it really has any great significance to the overall bacterial reduktion. Purpose. Investigate how three different preoperative disinfection methods with chlorhexidine alcohol 5mg/ml relate to each other in order to minimize bacterial growth. Method. The study is scheduled to be performed in a medium-sized county hospital in Västra Götaland Region, Sweden, comprised of one hundred fifty subjects on which bacterial cultures will be taken before and after disinfection. This will generate a total of three hundred bacterial cultures. A pilot study has been conducted with three subjects and generated eighteen bacterial cultures. A quantitative causal "cross - sectional" research design has been used. Results. In all bacterial cultures a total reduction of all bacterial colonies after disinfection was observd, regardless of disinfection method. Discussion. According to the pilot study, the choice of preoperative disinfectant method is irrelevant as long as plenty of chlorhexidine alcohol 5mg/ml i used.