engleski

Determination of the Disinfection Effect of Low Temperature Laundering Procedures using Novel Agents

The goal of every hospital laundry is to maintain and constantly improve its services of washing soiled, infected textiles to a clean, fresh and disinfected state. Laundered hospital textiles should not contain microorganisms that cause diseases because their users are patients with an impaired 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. The laundering of textiles is often taken for granted, but not uncommonly seems to be the source of infection outbreaks. Most people assume that laundry returned to them is in fact clean and therefore safe, although the dirt may certainly have been removed, it is far from sterile and experience encourages all infection control teams to take laundering very seriously in outbreaks that seem to have no obvious cause. In our research we compared different low temperature laundering procedures and tested the disinfection efficiency common using biomonitors (Enterococcus faecium and Staphylococcus aureus) and novel laundering detergents and disinfecting agents. It was found that the procedures achieved an appropriate disinfection effect thus proving that ecological low temperature laundering procedures are adequate for hospital textiles.

biomonitors; laundering; hygiene; disinfection

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