Comparison of Low‐Level to High‐Level Disinfection in Eliminating Microorganisms From Ultrasound Transducers Used on Skin: A Noninferiority Randomized Controlled Trial
Nathan Peters, Frances Williamson, Michelle J. Bauer, Stacey Llewellyn, Peter J. Snelling, Nicole Marsh, Patrick N. A. Harris, Adam G. Stewart, Claire M. Rickard
Abstract
There is a lack of international consensus as to whether high- or low-level disinfection (HLD or LLD) is required for ultrasound (US) transducers used during percutaneous procedures. This study compared the effectiveness of LLD to HLD on US transducers contaminated with microorganisms from skin.
Two identical linear US transducers repeatedly underwent either LLD or HLD during the study. Randomization determined which of these transducers was applied to left and right forearms of each participant. Swabs taken from transducers before and after reprocessing were plated then incubated for 4-5 days, after which colony forming units (CFU) were counted and identified. The primary hypothesis was the difference in the proportion of US transducers having no CFUs remaining after LLD and HLD would be less than or equal to the noninferiority margin of -5%.
Of the 654 recruited participants 73% (n = 478) had microbial growth from both transducers applied to their left and right forearms before reprocessing. These were included in the paired noninferiority statistical analysis where, after disinfection, all CFUs were eliminated in 100% (95% CI: 99.4-100.0%) of HLD transducer samples (n = 478) and 99.0% (95% CI: 97.6-99.7%) of LLD transducer samples (n = 473). The paired difference in the proportion of transducers having all CFUs eliminated between LLD and HLD was -1.0% (95% CI: -2.4 to -0.2%, P-value <.001).
Disinfection with LLD is noninferior to HLD when microorganisms from skin have contaminated the transducer. Therefore, using LLD for US transducers involved in percutaneous procedures would present no higher infection risk compared with HLD.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 42. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 October 2024.
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#1,052,077
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#41
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#21,072
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Outputs of similar age from Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine
#2
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Altmetric has tracked 26,596,651 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
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