A Simple Band Could Help Reduce Hospital Infections

Two doctors, recently qualified, believe they could have found an important weapon in the fight against hospital acquired infections. This new discovery will not break the budget either.

Hospital bugs, a serious problem in the UK, and by all accounts all over the world. A report estimates the hospital bug costs the NHS 1 billion pounds per annum. Drs Ryan Kerstein and Christain Fellowes were studying at Imperial College. They noticed that tourniquets, used to cause veins to expand, to enable blood samples to be taken or drips to be inserted, were being used over and over again. Around 40 million procedures using a tourniquet are carried out each year. The two doctors are convinced this could be a source of cross infection, and are determined to carry out their own tests. They have come up with a financially viable tourniquet called the tournistrip, made up of a long piece of plasticised paper, which has already generated a lot of interest and orders. They do not know how much the product will cost, but say it will be pence rather than pounds. They came up with the idea, where they saw tourniquets being used over and over again on different patients, which they thought was unacceptable. Throughout their training there was always a lot of emphasis put on infection control and good clinical technique. While watching their colleagues working at the hospital, and that even though their technique was stringent, they were limited by the re-usable equipment. The students decided to carry out their own study, and without warning, bleeped their colleagues and asked for their tourniquets, taking 52 from doctors, phlebotomists and nurses. The tourniquets had been in use anywhere from two weeks to one hundred and four weeks, being used on average eleven times a day. On questioning their colleagues, they found they all agreed the tourniquet could be a source of cross infection, with only a third of the staff cleaning them. Only half of the staff had stopped themselves from using them, when they knew the patient was infectious. They grew cultures on these and found MRSA (methicillin resistant or multi antibiotic resistant staphylococcus aureus) on three tourniquets and MSSA (methicillin sensitive staphylococcus aureus) on 30. Bug cultures were also found on hospital keyboards. The tournistrip has a similar dimension to a watch which is fastened using a quick release seal and based on wrist bands that are used mostly for concerts etc. Dr Alison Holmes, director of infection control at Hammersmith hospital and lecturer at Imperial said,

"The tournistrips would be a welcome addition in the fight against infection and her hospital had already placed an order. Tourniquets are a vehicle for cross infection, going from person to person. I am delighted by this).

The two students who were finalist in the Imperial Business Plan competition, applied simple technology to solve this problem.