Comparison of Effectiveness of Time Used in Surgical Hand Preparation Between a Duration of Ninety Seconds and Three Minutes: a Case Study of Appendectomy at Pranangklao Hospital

Abstract

Surgical hand preparation is one of the factors that can reduce surgical site of infection. The current duration of hand washing surgery has been reduced from ten minutes to three minutes. In addition, several studies have confirmed no different in the effectiveness of hand washing for three minutes and ninety seconds. The objective of this study was to compare the effectiveness of surgical hand preparation before appendectomy between hand washing periods of 90 seconds and 3 minutes. It was conducted as a prospective cohort study among 112 patients with the diagnosis of acute appendicitis, and underwent appendectomy at Pranangklao hospital. The patients were randomly divided into 2 groups: (1) 65 patients of which the surgeons washed their hands for ninety seconds before the operation, and (2) 47 patients of which the surgeons washed hands for three minutes. It was found that patients in both groups were not significantly different in sex, age, diagnosis, severity of appendicitis, receiving pre- and post-antibiotic, types of antibiotics, timing antibiotic pre operative and underlying disease. The percentages of surgical site infection of the 2 groups were not significantly different: the three-minute group was 8.50% and that for the ninety-second group was 4.6%, (p=0.45). There was no re-exploratory laparotomy after appendectomy in both groups. Thus, surgical hand preparation for three minutes and ninety seconds before appendectomy had no difference in effectiveness.