New advances in electronic devices for hole detection

✍ Scribed by Mary Jude Cox; William J. Bromberg; Robert D. Zura; Pamela A. Foresman; Raymond G. Morgan; Richard F. Edlich

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 630 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1045-4861
• DOI: 10.1002/jab.770050312

✦ Synopsis

Holes in surgical gloves are considered to be an important source of transmission of pathogens between surgeon and patient. Two new glove hole detectors have been devised to alert the surgeon to the presence of holes. These devices have been evaluated using six powder-free and seven powdered varieties of surgical gloves that were either dry or exposed to hydration. Eight of the 13 surgical gloves hydrated rapidly with water, altering their resistance to the conduction of electricity. Because the Barrier Integrity MonitorTM only has a hydration monitor, 68 false positives occurred during the evaluation, indicating to the surgeon that helshe should change gloves unnecessarily because the glove had no hole. In contrast, the Surgic Alert MonitorTM (SAMTM) had a hydration alarm as well as a glove hole detection alarm. During the 104 tests, the SAMm device showed no false positives. In the testing of five of the rapidly hydrating types of surgical gloves, the SAMm device could not reliably detect holes. On the basis of this study, the SAMTM device, in conjunction with gloves that resist hydration, appeared to be a reliable hole detection monitor.