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NEWS & INFORMATION |
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Source To Surgery - February 1995, Vol. 3 Issue I
A Report on Toronto Latex Conference, September 1994 Dr. John Yunginger, a highly respected allergy physician and researcher, reported on steps taken at his institution to afford protection to patients and the 15,000 - 16,000 staff exposed to latex antigens on a daily basis. Currently over 150 employees have been identified as latex sensitized which Yunginger describes as the "tip of the iceberg." Yunginger and his colleagues set upon a plan to measure allergy levels in all medical devices, especially exam and surgical gloves, in order to reduce the personnel exposure to latex allergies. Over 70 different pairs of gloves from a wide variety of manufacturers were evaluated. The RAST Inhibition measures total allergenic activity in terms of Au/ml (allergy units per milliliter) with a scoring system which extends from 10 Au/ml (lower limit of the assay) to 100,000 being raw non-ammoniated latex. In past reports he described a 3,000-fold difference in allergenicity among different glove brands. He also reported that due to chlorination to assist the donning process, powder-free exam and surgical gloves contain significantly lower amounts of allergens than powdered gloves. As a result of this study, the Mayo Medical Center and associated hospitals now purchase only gloves with the lowest amount of allergens. The surprising benefit to the Clinic was that by consolidating their inventories to only a few brands, they realized a savings of over $200,000 on their purchase of 8.9 million pairs of gloves, thus dispelling the myth that low allergen gloves are more expensive.
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