Use of Nanotechnology for Eradicating Bacterial Colonization in Intensive Care Units

Background: Nowadays the public pay more attention to the environmental quality and health care due to the advancement of medical technology and awareness of the epidemics in Taiwan in recent years. In health care settings, it is necessary to provide a safe environment which meets a higher standard. Most of hospitals implement infection control measures for prevention of nosocomial transmission. Hand hygiene is the most cost-effective and widely accepted practice in infection prevention. However, the hand hygiene adherence rate is difficult to reach above 80% in numerous studies. Thus, in addition to promote hand hygiene, reduction of bacterial colonization in the hospital environment could be another approach for infection prevention. 

Objective: To determine whether control of bacterial growth, by a new BIO-KIL product embedded into the cloth used by patients, was effective in controlling the bacterial colonization in the ICU environment.

Methods: The bacterial counts from both test (w/ Bio-Kil) and control ICUs were compared to document its efficacy.  During the study, a total of 1,496 samples (748 from each ICU) were collected from the surfaces of environment (eg. glass, laminate, wall, tank , etc..), instruments (respiratory faceplate, EKG faceplate ,etc..), and cloth for patients (sheets, robes, pillowcase, draping, etc..). Experimental results showed that samples from test ICU, which used BIO-KIL technology, have significantly lower bacterial counts compared with the control. 

Results: The average difference between the two groups is 39.244 cfu/mL (95% CI: 25.267 ~ 53.221, p<0.001). These data show that the BIO-KIL treatment can inhibit the growth of bacteria and evidently suppress the bacteria colonization.

Conclusions: BIO-KIL can be used in patient-related cloth to prevent bacterial colonization; thus prevent contact transmission in the health care settings. Further studies are needed to determine the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of BIO-KIL against specific pathogens, eg. MRSA or MDRAB, for prevention of nosocomial transmission in ICUs.