P026 - Disinfection of Needleless Connectors Using UVC Light

Niaz Banaei, MD - Professor of Pathology and of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Stanford University
Michael Fourkas, MS - Puracath Medical, Inc.
Gregory Schears, MD - Mayo Clinic

Purpose: : Nearly 50% of post-insertion catheter-related infections are due to microbial ingress from needleless connectors (NC). The clinical guideline for disinfecting NC is to wipe the NC hub with 70% alcohol and to manually scrub the connector surface for >15 seconds. Unfortunately, multiple studies have found low compliance.

Methods: : Infections arising from NC could result in central line associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI). In this study, we investigated the efficacy of 1 second of ultraviolet light-C exposure in the reduction of the 3 most common CLABSI associated organisms: Staphylococcus aureus, Candida albicans, Candida auris, and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). We inoculated the UV transmissive catheter connectors with 10 μL of cultured inoculum (10e7 cfu/mL) and placed into an exposure chamber for UV exposure of 1 second. After the procedure for UV disinfection, we flushed with 10 mL of 0.9% saline solution, filtered through a 0.45um membrane and then agar plated. We counted the number of colonies on each plate to determine the log reduction. We tested a total of 30 NC samples for each organism with 3 positive controls and 1 negative control.

Results: : The mean log reductions across 30 samples were 5.68 (standard deviation of 0.63), 5.05 (0.61), 4.41 (0.33), and 6.38 (0.46) for Staphylococcus aureus, Candida albicans, Candida auris and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), respectively.

Limitations:: Our study is limited by sample size and the number of CLABSI-related organisms tested. Further studies should be conducted with other organisms commonly associated with hospital-related infections.

Conclusions: : Our findings demonstrate greater than 4 log reduction (or 99.99% disinfection) of common CLABSI-associated organisms with 1 second of UV-C exposure. This significant decrease in UV exposure time will reduce disruption in hospital workflow, decrease CLABSI rates, and increase aseptic technique compliance.