Ongoing challenges in maintaining optimum manual cleaning and disinfection of hospital rooms have created increased interest in “no-touch” decontamination technologies including the use of ultraviolet light (UV). Trials have shown that some UV devices can decrease surface contamination and reduce healthcare-associated infections. Despite substantial marketing of these devices for use in healthcare settings, few data are available regarding the doses of UV-C necessary to yield desired reductions in healthcare pathogens and the ability of mobile devices to deliver adequate doses to various surfaces in patient rooms.

A review by Boyce and Donskey (2019) summarizes the physical aspects of UV that affect the doses delivered to surfaces, the UV-C doses needed to yield 3 log10 reductions of several important healthcare-associated pathogens, the doses of UV-C that can be achieved in various locations in patient rooms using mobile UV-C devices, and methods for measuring UV doses delivered to surfaces.

Reference: Boyce JM and Curtis J. Donskey CJ. Understanding ultraviolet light surface decontamination in hospital rooms: A primer. Vol. 40, No. 9. Pp. 1030-1035. September 2019.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2019.161