engleski

Determining the disinfection effect of laundering procedures for hospital textiles using different indicator bacteria

Laundered hospital textiles should not contain micro organisms that cause diseases because their users are patients with a low immune system and should therefore be protected from infections from inappropriately washed textiles. It is most important that the laundering procedure has an anti-microbial effect, especially when washing hospital textiles that contain many kinds of pathogenic bacteria, fungi and viruses, and, at the same time does not cause excessive damage on the washed textiles. Recent studies confirm the increase of nosocomial infections and microbial resistance and that one of the possible causes are infected textiles due to inappropriate laundering procedures. Most Slovenian laundries use thermal laundering procedures with high energy and water consumption to disinfect hospital textiles. In addition to this fact, there is an increasing number of hospital textiles composed of cotton/polyester blends which cannot endure high temperatures of thermal disinfection. On the other hand, decreasing the temperature of laundering procedures enhances the possibility of pathogenic microorganisms to survive the laundering procedure. In our research we determined the antimicrobial laundering effect by simulating a common laundering procedure for hospital textiles in the laboratory washing machine at different temperatures by the use of the following indicator bacteria: Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterobacter aerogenes and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Artificial sweat was used as a substrate for simulating human excrements and was inoculated together with the chosen microorganisms onto cotton pieces to simulate real laundering conditions. It was found that all bacteria survived at 60 °C, but no microorganisms were found at 75°C.

hygiene; disinfection; textiles; laundry

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