Fingernails and Infection

Outpatient Surgery E-Weekly (2/5/08) has reported about a study that is published in the January issue of the Journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology that found that although antibiotic gels help increase hand hygiene, they failed to reduce infection rates in two ICUs over a two-year period.

"Hand hygiene may be important, but it's only one ingredient in the overall recipe for preventing infection," says Mark Rupp, MD, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, medical director of the school's Department of Healthcare Epideminology and the study's principal author.

Exactly why the infection rates did not decrease when hand hygiene compliance increased is unknown, says Dr. Rupp. One theory has to do with fingernail length. They found more, and varied, microbes when the nurses had fingernails more than two millimeters long, wore rings or lacked access to hand gels. According to Dr. Rupp, fingernails are too long for healthcare if you can see them over the skin of your fingers when looking at your palm.

To read more on this topic please go to the link below.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/524333