Surgical site infection rates were decreased by 46 percent at Lowell General Hospital in Massachusetts with the use of Xenex Germ-Zapping Robots, according to a peer-reviewed clinical outcome study conducted in partnership with Xenex.

The study, led by Angela Catalanotti, BSN, RN, evaluated infection rates in 13 operating rooms. Every night after the standard cleaning, two Xenex UV disinfection systems were used to kill off remaining viruses and bacteria.

“There were several reasons that we chose Xenex as opposed to the mercury UV technologies,” Dudley Abbe, vice president of hospitality and support services at Lowell General Hospital, told HCB News. “Pulsed xenon creates full spectrum, high level intensity germicidal UV light across the entire disinfecting spectrum [while] continuous mercury UV produces single spectrum, low intensity UV light.”
Another reason Abbe cited was an interest in improving the safety of patients and employees by avoiding the use of mercury at the hospital.

For the study, the researchers reviewed the medical records of patients after they had surgery in these rooms, to look for evidence of infection that was related to their medical procedure. They determined that the hospital saved $478,055 due to the decrease in infections.

“The rates of infection before and after implementing Xenex were compared using statistical tests … [which] showed that 23 infections were prevented, and one life was saved by implementing Xenex for disinfection of the operating room,” Dr. Sarah Simmons, an author on the paper, and science director of Xenex, told HCB News.

The robot has a four or five minute disinfection cycle and can disinfect 30 to 62 hospital rooms a day, including patient rooms, operating rooms, equipment rooms, emergency rooms, ICUs and public areas.

According to the CDC, in 2011 there were an estimated 722,000 hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) in U.S. acute care hospitals and approximately 75,000 patients with HAIs died during their stay at the hospital.

The CDC also states that research has shown that when health care facilities, care teams, doctors and nurses are aware of infection problems and take steps to preventing them, rates of some HAIs can decrease by more than 70 percent.

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