A comparative study on surgical outcomes between preoperative hand disinfection by surgical hand rubbing and traditional surgical hand scrubbing

Background: Surgical wound infection (Syn. Surgical site infection SSI) remains major chunk of hospital acquired infection despite robust advancements of science and technology in asepsis research. Objective: This Prospective, observational longitudinal study was designed to assess whether aqueous alcohol-based surgical hand rubbing (SHR) can effectively replace traditional surgical hand scrubbing (SHS) without increasing incidence of SSIs amid additional benefits of enhanced compliance and saving of real time, and saving water in the operation rooms. Methods: The study was conducted to assess outcomes of gastrointestinal (GI) surgeries from 1st January 2025 to 1st March 2025 on 83 patients with comparable demographic and procedural profiles scheduled for elective open and laparoscopic uncomplicated cases. Two groups of surgeons with comparable skills in two units were primed into two arms by randomly assigning to carry out either surgical hand scrubbing (SHS n=37) and surgical hand rubbing (SHR n=46) groups to compare post-operative SSI rates. Results: 62 laparoscopic cholecystectomies (n=34 SHS, n=28 SHR) were performed; 21 other gastrointestinal surgical procedures were done. Our study recorded nil SSI in both groups at both the 7-day and 31-day postoperative follow-up. Average sanitization times were noted in SHS 3.48 and SHR 1.56 minutes respectively; a difference of nearly 2 minutes. Mean water utilized per SHS was 3.8L, SHR consumed no water beyond initial rinse. Conclusions: Initial results of our original research work suggest that alcohol-based hand rubs may offer a comparable alternative to traditional scrubbing, with added practical benefits of summary findings on ‘saving water by Surgical Hand rubbing’.