Microbiologic techniques. Before surgical
hand scrubs, subjects cleaned their hands following the
AORN guidelines for general hand hygiene to remove
transient dirt and flora. To test for antimicrobial
efficacy of each surgical hand scrubs, a modified
glove-juice technique was used. The subject inserted
the dominant hand into a sterile polyethylene bag
containing 50 ml of sampling solution (.075 mol/L
phosphate buffer, pH 7.9, containing 3% polysorbate
80, 0.1% t-Octylphenoxy-polyethoxyethanol, and 0.3%
lecithin). This solution is suitable for this study in
order to neutralize any residual antiseptic on the skin
and remove microorganisms counted as colonyforming
units (CFUs).6
The entire hand of each subject was massaged
through the wall of the bag for one minute by the data
collector. The bags were transferred to the
microbiology laboratory within one hour for
microbiology counts. The data were recorded in
Microbiology Record Form.