Decontamination of mobile phones and electronic devices for health care professionals using a chlorhexidine/carbomer 940® gel

Abstract

Though they reduce microorganism growth, current hospital disinfectants also damage many of today’s modern electronic devices such as tablets and smartphones. Herein, the efficacy of a new chlorhexidine digluconate gel (CDG) was tested as a disinfectant for mobile and electronic devices in a clinical environment. Specifically, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus were used to infect the screen of eight smartphones. The CDG was prepared at concentrations of 2%, 4% and 6%, and tested on paper disks infected with these bacteria before being tested on the smartphones. The devices were disinfected with the CDG gel (4%) at two times: immediately and after 5 min of the bacterial contamination. In all cases, the CDG gel eliminated 100% of gram-positive and gram-negative microorganisms compared to the control (without any agent). In addition, the gel did not damage the smartphones. Therefore, our study suggests that the CDG gel may be applied to disinfect a wide range of electronic devices for health care professionals in the hospital environment.

Keywords

smartphones / disinfection / clinical environment / chlorhexidine / bacteria

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Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to the team from the bacteriology sector of the Clinical Laboratory of University Hospital of West of Paraná for laboratory evaluation and aid of the application of data collection. Anderson Oliveira Lobo and Fernanda Roberta Marciano would like to thank the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq grant numbers: AOL ‒ 303752/2017-3 and FRM ‒ 304133/2017-5), Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, grant numbers 88881.120138/2016-01 and 88881.120221/2016-01) and to the Universidade Brasil for scholarships. English language corrections were provided by Ms. Jessica Fitzgerald, a writing consultant for the Chemical Engineering Writing Center at North-eastern University.

This study did not count on funding fomenting agencies. There are no conflicts of interest by the authors.

版权

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