UVC Box: An Effective Way to Quickly Decontaminate Healthcare Facilities’ Wheelchairs
Cloé Adam, Marius Colin, Romuald Stock, Laurent Weiss, Sophie C. Gangloff

TL;DR
A UVC box can effectively and quickly disinfect wheelchairs in healthcare facilities, but its efficiency depends on the material and design of the objects being treated.
Contribution
The study introduces a UVC box for decontaminating complex objects like wheelchairs and identifies material-specific effects on disinfection efficiency.
Findings
A 5-minute UVC treatment reduces bacterial burden by more than 3 logs in Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis.
Rigid materials like steel and plastic show the lowest residual bacterial burdens after UVC treatment.
Porous materials and surface treatments on metallic samples reduce UVC disinfection efficiency.
Abstract
Disinfection in the hospital environment remains challenging, especially for wide and structurally complex objects such as beds or wheelchairs. Indeed, the regular disinfection of these objects with chemicals is manually carried out by healthcare workers and is fastidious and time-consuming. Alternative antibacterial techniques were thus proposed in the past decades, including the use of naturally antimicrobial UVC. Here, the antibacterial efficiency of a large UVC box built to accommodate wheelchairs was investigated through testing bacterial burden reductions on various parts of a wheelchair, with various support types and with several treatment durations. The results demonstrate a time-dependent antibacterial effect, with a strong burden reduction at only five minutes of treatment (>3-log median reduction in Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis). The UVC flux and residual…
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Taxonomy
TopicsInfection Control in Healthcare · Infection Control and Ventilation · Dental Research and COVID-19
