The role of chemicals in medical gloves
Challenges and opportunities with chemicals in surgical gloves: meeting customer expectations
Chemicals in surgical gloves get a bad rap, but they are not always the bad guy. What challenges and opportunities drive the future of medical glove development?
Can we create medical gloves without chemicals – and better yet, do we need to?
Allergies, standards and innovation all play significant roles in the development of medical and surgical gloves.
In this podcast
Dr. Haydn Williams dives into the specifics of how latex allergies have shaped glove manufacturing, how standards help measure various glove properties — including residual chemicals — and what this means in practice.
Standards and measures
Dr. Haydn Williams says no — in fact, it makes more sense to apply standardisation to medical gloves in order to test and report residual chemicals.
Chemicals yes, accelerators no
Medical gloves without chemical accelerators may be possible, but chemicals are here to stay — and they aren’t the bad guys. They’re in the glove for a reason.
Refocus
Preserving the properties of gloves that practitioners — especially surgeons — rely on will require manufacturers to focus on removing chemicals that may cause allergic reactions, exploring techniques to reduce chemical content in the final product and continuing to innovate manufacturing processes to produce gloves where accelerators are eliminated.
Hands & gloves podcast
Hands and gloves hold many of the critical keys to infection prevention, operating room (OR) efficiency and surgical best practices. Hear more from your peers about OR practices, gloving and other surgical glove-related topics in the podcast series Hands & gloves.
Listen to all episodesRelated articles
Read all-
Gloves | 2 min read Strategies for active OR quality improvement
Using improvement science to drive change in the operating room
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Gloves | 4 min read Double gloving for complete protection
In discussion with surgeons and other operating room (OR) staff, such as surgical nurses, safety for their patients and for themselves is a key concern.
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Gloves | 1 min read Balancing practice and theory in the OR
Swedish OR nurses’ preventive interventions to reduce bacterial growth and SSIs, and to increase comfort in patients undergoing surgery
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Gloves | 1 min read OR sustainability: A holistic system understanding
How do surgical gloves affect sustainability and the global environment?
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Gloves | 1 min read The new generation of (NRL) surgical gloves
Surgical gloves and raw materials – time for reappraisal?
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Gloves | 2 min read Protocol to practice: Single to double gloving
How to implement a double gloving protocol in practice
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Gloves | 2 min read Culture of operating room (OR) safety: Double gloving for effective hand protection
Improving surgical gloving practice
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Gloves | 2 min read Cochrane reviews on double gloving
The efficacy of double gloving in reducing the risk of an inner-glove perforation and increase the detection of perforations when they occur has been evaluated in two different Cochrane systematic reviews¹,².
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Gloves | 2 min read The dangers of powder in surgical gloves
The dangers of powder in surgical gloves have long been known and well-documented. Eliminating the use of glove powder can help eliminate several adverse health effects that may result from its use, such as postoperative adhesions, granulomas, wound contamination and delayed wound healing 1 2.
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References
- Palosuo et.al. Latex Medical Gloves: Time for a Reappraisal 2011. https://karger.com/iaa/article-pdf/156/3/234/2962765/000323892.pdf