Scientific paperHow often does glove perforation occur in surgery? comparison between single gloves and a double-gloving system
Section snippets
Methods
The study material comprised all gloves used by the surgeons in surgical operations at Satakunta Central Hospital for a period of 2 months, September and October 1999. Before the study period, the surgeons were able to test the double-gloving system for a period of 2 weeks. The investigation was open and prospective. The randomization was made according to the year of the birth of the patient: patients born in even years were operated on with double-gloving and those born in uneven years were
Results
Altogether 885 surgical operations were included in this study. Most of the operations were in the field of orthopedics and traumatology and gastrointestinal surgery (Table 1). Glove perforations were observed in 162 operations out of 885 procedures (18.3%). The assistant surgeon took part in the operation 284 times. The assistant surgeon had glove perforations in 22 out of 284 operations (7.7%), and the surgeon had glove perforations in 67 out of 284 operations (23.6%). Altogether 2,462
Comments
Glove perforation is a very common event during surgery as our study showed. The same results have been shown in other studies as well. Our frequency of perforations was 18.3% of operations. In the literature the frequencies have varied from 22% to 61% during various types of surgical procedures [2], [3], [7]. The highest frequencies have been reported in orthopedics, traumatology, and thoracic surgery, because in those fields the surgeon faces sharp fractured bones or bony structures in the
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by a grant from Regent Medical, London, UK.
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