The use of blunt-tip suture needles when appropriate is strongly recommended in order to decrease needlestick injuries and limit exposure to healthcare-associated infections, according to a Food and Drug Administration-led notice.

On May 30, the FDA, along with the CDC, OSHA and NIOSH, issued a joint safety communication strongly encouraging surgeons, OR supervisors, perioperative nurses, infection preventionists and other healthcare professionals to use and promote the use of blunt-tip suture needles instead of standard suture needles to suture fascia and muscle. Using blunt-tip suture needles decreases the risk of needlestick injury and exposure to such bloodborne viruses as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV, according to the agencies.

The joint communication cites published studies that show the use of blunt-tip suture needles cuts the risk of needlestick injuries by 69%. It also notes that while blunt-tip needles cost about 70 cents more than standard suture needles, "the benefits of reducing the risk of serious and potentially fatal bloodborne infections for healthcare personnel support their use when clinically appropriate."

Mark McGraw

Patients who suffer just a single skin infection are 3 times more likely to develop surgical site infections, even when proper protocols to prevent SSIs are followed, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

The researchers followed more than 600 surgery patients for 6 months post-op. Nearly 7% of patients who had a history of skin infections developed SSIs, compared to the almost 4% of patients without a history of skin disease who developed post-op infections. It made no difference whether the skin infections were recent or had occurred years earlier, the researchers note.

"People have intrinsic differences in how susceptible they are to infection," says the study's lead author Nauder Faraday, MD, MPH, an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins. His findings, which appear online in the Annals of Surgery, suggest that understanding the different ways individuals respond to skin cuts would lead to improved protocols for preventing SSIs.

Dr. Faraday also believes leveling financial penalties against hospitals where patients suffer SSIs might be premature, given that biological differences account for some of the risk involved.

"The problem with financial penalties instituted by CMS is that it implies we know everything about how to prevent surgical site infections, and if we just do the right thing, we won't have complications," he says. "There's no doubt we can and should do better, but we won't eliminate infections with the knowledge and treatments we have now."

Daniel Cook

Outpatient Surgery Magazine subscribers who take the "2012 Infection Control Challenge" can learn how to wipe out surgical site infections while entering the running to win from a selection of prizes that include an Apple iPad 3, an Amazon Kindle Fire or other merchandise.

It's educational, fun and easy. Just point your browser to our contest website between June 6 and June 30 to begin the challenge.

You'll need your subscriber number (located on your mailing label) and a copy of the May 2012 Manager's Guide to Infection Control (which was mailed with our May issue) to participate. Test your ability to stamp out SSIs, and don't delay: the deadline for contest entries is June 30.

Steve Archibald

In this week's InstaPoll, we want to know if your facility follows a 2-stick policy for IV starts - meaning, do you call in an anesthesia provider to start the IV if the pre-op nurse can't get it done in 2 tries?

According to the results of last week's poll, many ORs have turnover down to a science. Last week we asked how long it took you to turn a room over. The results, based on 777 responses: