Study Reveals UV Disinfection Rates

With the help of germ-killing UV robots, Chesapeake Regional Healthcare (CRH) saw a 12 percent decrease in its Clostridium difficile (C.diff) infection rates, according to an article on the Cleanzine website.

The Chesapeake, Virginia, facility was one of nine hospitals that participated in "Enhanced terminal room disinfection and acquisition and infection caused by multidrug-resistant organisms and Clostridium difficile,"  a study published in The Lancet.

The two-year study, conducted from 2012-2014, is said to be the only randomized clinical trial on UV disinfection.

In the study, rooms with a known C.diff patient were treated with bleach daily as well as at discharge and had a high 90 percent compliance rate for both manual disinfection processes as well as handwashing. For those rooms in the UV arm of the study, each room was disinfected with a UV robot following manual bleach disinfection, the article said.

Tiffany Silmon, director, infection prevention and control, at CRH confirmed that the facility experienced a significant decrease in both infection and colonisation rates with all multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) and about a 12 percent decrease in C. diff infections during the arms of the study that included UV units and bleach.

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