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De­vel­op­ment of a PCR based high-speed method for proof and doc­u­men­ta­tion of a re­quire­ment-fair sur­face clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tion in ac­cor­dance with the new RKI guide­line

IGF 14974 N

The dis­in­fect­ing clean­ing with­in the health area rep­re­sents an eco­nom­i­cal­ly at­trac­tive ser­vice with fur­ther growth po­ten­tial for the clean­ing ser­vice en­ter­pris­es. How­ev­er, over the last years the hy­giene re­quire­ments in­creased con­stant­ly in med­i­cal and other hy­gien­i­cal­ly fas­tid­i­ous areas. This has also se­ri­ous con­se­quences for the clean­ing en­ter­pris­es. Op­er­at­ing rooms, ma­ter­ni­ty rooms, in­ten­sive care units etc. were al­ready in the focus of hy­giene mea­sures; be­sides dial­y­sis units, hos­pi­tal ster­ile sup­plies, clin­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries, baths and kitchens are also rec­og­nized as to be crit­i­cal areas ac­cord­ing to the guide­lines of Robert-Koch-In­sti­tute (RKI). The newest RKI guide­line about sur­face dis­in­fec­tion dif­fer­en­ti­ates cer­tain areas into cat­e­gories with “spe­cial in­fec­tion risk”, “pos­si­ble in­fec­tion risk” and “with­out in­fec­tion risk”. Now only lec­ture-rooms and stair­ways etc. be­long into the cat­e­go­ry “with­out in­fec­tion risk”; gen­er­al sta­tions and out­pa­tient clin­ics are al­ready con­sid­ered to be “pos­si­bly riski­ly”. Ac­cord­ing to the RKI guide­lines such areas need to be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­in­fect­ed a) if there is a rec­og­niz­able con­tam­i­na­tion, b) in the con­text of a ter­mi­nal dis­in­fec­tion, c) in out­break sit­u­a­tions as well as d) if spe­cial germs occur; even so called pa­tient-far sur­faces must be in­clud­ed then. In any case it should be en­sured that germs can’t be trans­ferred from “un­crit­i­cal” areas to more crit­i­cal areas. For pre­ven­tion as well as de­tec­tion of im­prop­er clean­ing or dis­in­fec­tion mea­sures the RKI ad­vis­es hy­gien­ic con­trols of dis­in­fec­tion and clean­ing meth­ods and from pro­ce­dures and work­flows for the pro­cess­ing of the clean­ing uten­sils as parts of qual­i­ty man­age­ment and qual­i­ty as­sur­ance sys­tems. Be­cause of this ad­vis­es the hy­giene com­mis­sions of the hos­pi­tals de­mand such hy­giene con­trols on in­ter­nal clean­ing per­son­nel and also obli­ga­to­ri­ly on ex­ter­nal clean­ing ser­vice en­ter­pris­es. In order to sat­is­fy the men­tioned de­mands, in the fu­ture it will be es­sen­tial for the clean­ing ser­vice en­ter­pris­es to prove and doc­u­ment the hy­gien­ic qual­i­ty of their work in each in­di­vid­u­al case. Only this way they can ob­tain and ex­pand their mar­ket share and ful­fill the re­quire­ments of their cus­tomers. In the fin­ished pro­ject a fast method in­clud­ing an adapt­ed sam­pling pos­si­bil­i­ty was de­vel­oped that is suit­able for mea­sur­ing the sur­face qual­i­ty re­gard­ing mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal con­tam­i­na­tions with­in 90 min­utes. The method is based on re­al­Time-PCR and was op­ti­mised to de­tect RNA. RNA is not sta­ble for a longer time on sur­faces like DNA and thus its pres­ence in­di­cates the pres­ence of veg­e­ta­tive mi­croor­gan­isms.

The IGF-pro­ject 14974 N of the re­search as­so­ci­a­tion Eu­ro­pean Clean­ing and Hy­giene Tech­nol­o­gy Re­search As­so­ci­a­tion, Cam­pus Ficht­en­hain 11, D-47807 Krefeld, was sup­port­ed via the AiF with­in the fund­ing pro­gramme „In­dus­trielle Gemein­schafts­forschung und –en­twick­lung (IGF)“ by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Tech­nol­o­gy (BMWi) due to a de­ci­sion of the Ger­man Par­lia­ment.

 

 

The re­search re­port is avail­able on re­quest from FRT.

The IGF-pro­ject IGF 14974 N of the re­search as­so­ci­a­tion Europäische Forschungs­ge­mein­schaft Reini­gungs- und Hy­gien­etech­nolo­gie e.V., Cam­pus Ficht­en­hain 11, 47807 Krefeld, was sup­port­ed via the AiF with­in the fund­ing pro­gram „In­dus­trielle Gemein­schafts­forschung und -en­twick­lung (IGF)“ by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Cli­mate Ac­tion due to a de­ci­sion of the Ger­man Par­lia­ment.