Abstract :
Introduction: Two million people per year are affected by hospital acquired infections. Treating
nosocomial infections is challenging as most of the causative agents are multi drug resistant. Disinfection
plays a major role in preventing these infections. In this context an attempt was made to compare
the efficacy of (1%) glutaraldehyde disinfectant and (70%) isopropyl alcohol as surface disinfectants in
Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Materials and Methods: Samples were collected from bed railings, surface of monitor and side table of the
all ICU’s of JSS Hospital Mysore. Samples were collected before and after disinfection using appropriate
disinfectants. After cleaning samples were collected after contact time of 20 minutes. Samples were
inoculated on to two sets of blood agar plate and one set of MacConkey agar plate incubated at 37?C under
both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. After incubation colony count was done manually to compare the
results.
Results: Under aerobic conditions the glutaraldehyde was found 11% more efficient than isopropyl alcohol
and when plates were incubated anaerobically glutaraldehyde was found 4% more efficient than isopropyl
alcohol. This difference is not significant statistically as the p value is 0.059 which is more than critical
significant value 0.05. Null hypothesis is accepted.
Conclusion: Thus, our study showed that there were no statistically significant differences between the
efficacies of disinfectants. We concluded that isopropyl alcohol is a better surface disinfectant to be used
in intensive care units as it is safe to use and cost effective on the other hand glutaraldehyde is toxic,
carcinogenic and also it is expensive.
Keyword :
Glutaraldehyde, Isopropyl Alcohol, ICU.