2 ms·

The sterility of a doctor's eye-wear is a concern because of the following simple scenario: A doctor has been seeing patients all day, and visits one with an a

by Fomite 13y ago

The sterility of a doctor's eye-wear is a concern because of the following simple scenario: A doctor has been seeing patients all day, and visits one with an active C. difficile infection. They touch the patient's bed (which has been shown to be as contaminated with organism as the skin), and then, before they change their gloves, adjust their glasses - transferring the pathogen to a surface it can likely persist on for some span of time. Later that day, they adjust their glasses again (seriously, I do this like 20 times a day), and recontaminate their hands before examining another patient. Glasses - along with shoes, ties, lab coats, cell phones, etc. represent potential sources of cross contamination between patients, and are an active area of scientific and medical research.

jebus989 13y ago
I get this I really do, you can invent just-so stories about transmission with anything regardless of whether he's wearing Glass. Doctor visits patient with <highly transmissable pathogen> touches x, washes hands and but then (!) retouches x and treats an immune-deficient patient etc. My point is x can be forehead, hair, pocket, watch, any variable you can think of and we can't control for any of them. You seem to think every item a doctor carries needs to be autoclaved at clocking out time, when really the only viable solution is to wash your hands, change gloves etc. — sterilise your contact points, not your person and everything on it.
- Fomite 13y ago
  > we can't control for any of them Yes, we can. Infection control procedure is exactly that, and we have begin looking at how we can minimize as many of those items as possible. Things like the universal gowning and gloving studies, examining how to clean surfaces and keep them clean, what to do about cell phone and clothing contamination, etc. There are a massive number of studies showing contamination of things doctors carry, and studies showing heavy correlations between the level of contamination and patient outcomes. It's an active area of research, and commercial development. Your idea that somehow "Wash your hands and change gloves" is fine, but "Find out if you can use clorhexidine wipes on Google Glass, and if we need to" is somehow Infection Control Gone Mad! really puzzles me.
  - jebus989 13y ago
    That's mischaracterising my position, so I don't doubt you're puzzled.
    - Fomite 13y ago
      "Now, like all pieces of medical equipment, it would probably good to culture some swabs off them to see what's growing, and how hard they are to clean." leads to you... "You seem to think every item a doctor carries needs to be autoclaved at clocking out time" and claiming tabloid scare stories. Perhaps it isn't well characterized to begin with?
jessriedel 13y ago
Let's rephrase: why would glass be any different than a doctor's normal glasses? If it's not, then are you just saying "we should probably treat this like their glasses, i.e. do research but currently do nothing special in a clinical setting"?
- Fomite 13y ago
  Possibly harder to clean than normal glasses - I'm not worried about frying the electronics in my glasses. That's the only difference I can think of, but it's a major one. Additionally, if they're being used heavily by people not used to wearing glasses, the frequency of touching them is probably higher.
  - jessriedel 13y ago
    So, essentially no change worth talking about. Look, I get the idea of "Hey, here's something new, it could change something in a bad way, so lets test it." Fine, I hope someone does that. But the fact that these kind of concerns are the first thing that come to people's mind and make it to the top of this thread means the discussion is bad. Every time someone mentions something revolutionary like a self-driving car, we could spend the discussion talking about that super unusual situation when the self-driving car is more dangerous than a normal one. Or when Amazon starts drone deliveries would could imagine that one time it crash and kills a dog. But this is just a distraction.
  - Fomite 13y ago
    > So, essentially no change worth talking about. Umm...depends on how hard it is to clean. Something we don't know the answer to. I can hose down my glasses with clorhexidine, they're entirely inert. Can I do that with a Google Glass? Does interacting with your glasses as an information gathering tool change usage patterns - for better or ill? You can't say there's no change worth talking about until you actually do the study. Not even a particularly hard study at that. > Look, I get the idea of "Hey, here's something new, it could change something in a bad way, so lets test it." Fine, I hope someone does that. But the fact that these kind of concerns are the first thing that come to people's mind and make it to the top of this thread means the discussion is bad. Every time someone mentions something revolutionary like a self-driving car, we could spend the discussion talking about that super unusual situation when the self-driving car is more dangerous than a normal one. Or when Amazon starts drone deliveries would could imagine that one time it crash and kills a dog. But this is just a distraction. First off, I was like the first or second poster on the thread - that it got a lot of comments is possibly just because it was there. Second, I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist with a particular interest in hospital infection control, especially surface contamination mediated transmission. Asking questions like this is my job.

by Fomite 13y ago

jebus989 13y ago

I get this I really do, you can invent just-so stories about transmission with anything regardless of whether he's wearing Glass. Doctor visits patient with <highly transmissable pathogen> touches x, washes hands and but then (!) retouches x and treats an immune-deficient patient etc. My point is x can be forehead, hair, pocket, watch, any variable you can think of and we can't control for any of them. You seem to think every item a doctor carries needs to be autoclaved at clocking out time, when really the only viable solution is to wash your hands, change gloves etc. — sterilise your contact points, not your person and everything on it.

Fomite 13y ago
> we can't control for any of them Yes, we can. Infection control procedure is exactly that, and we have begin looking at how we can minimize as many of those items as possible. Things like the universal gowning and gloving studies, examining how to clean surfaces and keep them clean, what to do about cell phone and clothing contamination, etc. There are a massive number of studies showing contamination of things doctors carry, and studies showing heavy correlations between the level of contamination and patient outcomes. It's an active area of research, and commercial development. Your idea that somehow "Wash your hands and change gloves" is fine, but "Find out if you can use clorhexidine wipes on Google Glass, and if we need to" is somehow Infection Control Gone Mad! really puzzles me.
- jebus989 13y ago
  That's mischaracterising my position, so I don't doubt you're puzzled.
  - Fomite 13y ago
    "Now, like all pieces of medical equipment, it would probably good to culture some swabs off them to see what's growing, and how hard they are to clean." leads to you... "You seem to think every item a doctor carries needs to be autoclaved at clocking out time" and claiming tabloid scare stories. Perhaps it isn't well characterized to begin with?

jessriedel 13y ago

Let's rephrase: why would glass be any different than a doctor's normal glasses? If it's not, then are you just saying "we should probably treat this like their glasses, i.e. do research but currently do nothing special in a clinical setting"?

Fomite 13y ago
Possibly harder to clean than normal glasses - I'm not worried about frying the electronics in my glasses. That's the only difference I can think of, but it's a major one. Additionally, if they're being used heavily by people not used to wearing glasses, the frequency of touching them is probably higher.
- jessriedel 13y ago
  So, essentially no change worth talking about. Look, I get the idea of "Hey, here's something new, it could change something in a bad way, so lets test it." Fine, I hope someone does that. But the fact that these kind of concerns are the first thing that come to people's mind and make it to the top of this thread means the discussion is bad. Every time someone mentions something revolutionary like a self-driving car, we could spend the discussion talking about that super unusual situation when the self-driving car is more dangerous than a normal one. Or when Amazon starts drone deliveries would could imagine that one time it crash and kills a dog. But this is just a distraction.
- Fomite 13y ago
  > So, essentially no change worth talking about. Umm...depends on how hard it is to clean. Something we don't know the answer to. I can hose down my glasses with clorhexidine, they're entirely inert. Can I do that with a Google Glass? Does interacting with your glasses as an information gathering tool change usage patterns - for better or ill? You can't say there's no change worth talking about until you actually do the study. Not even a particularly hard study at that. > Look, I get the idea of "Hey, here's something new, it could change something in a bad way, so lets test it." Fine, I hope someone does that. But the fact that these kind of concerns are the first thing that come to people's mind and make it to the top of this thread means the discussion is bad. Every time someone mentions something revolutionary like a self-driving car, we could spend the discussion talking about that super unusual situation when the self-driving car is more dangerous than a normal one. Or when Amazon starts drone deliveries would could imagine that one time it crash and kills a dog. But this is just a distraction. First off, I was like the first or second poster on the thread - that it got a lot of comments is possibly just because it was there. Second, I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist with a particular interest in hospital infection control, especially surface contamination mediated transmission. Asking questions like this is my job.