by Brianna Crandall — August 13, 2014—Elevator buttons are more likely to be colonized by bacteria than toilet surfaces, found a new study of three large urban hospitals led by researchers from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada. The findings are a reminder both for more effective hand hygiene and related education, and for increased diligence by facilities and custodial staff.
“Elevators are a component of modern hospital care, and are used by multiple people with ungloved hands who will later go on to make contact with patients,” says study co-author Dr. Donald Redelmeier, staff physician, division of general internal medicine at Sunnybrook and researcher with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES).
At each hospital, 120 randomly selected interior and exterior elevator buttons were swabbed over a ten-day period. These were compared against swabs of toilet surfaces in men’s washrooms, including exterior and interior entry-door handles, the privacy latch and the toilet flusher.
Sixty-one percent of the elevator button samples showed microbiological growth, compared to only 43 percent of the toilet surface samples. Bacteria cultured from the elevator buttons and toilet surfaces included Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, coliform (or bowel) bacteria, Enterococcus and Pseudomonas, although the researchers point out that the bacteria are unlikely to cause specific diseases in most cases.
“We were surprised by the frequency of bacterial colonization on the elevator buttons, but we were also struck by how easily it could be avoided, specifically by the use of good hand washing or hand hygiene,” says co-author Dr. Andrew Simor, chief, department of microbiology and infectious diseases at Sunnybrook.
The authors suggest several strategies for reducing the frequency of bacterial colonization on commonly touched surfaces. “Use alcohol-based hand sanitizer before and after touching the buttons, or avoid touching them altogether by using the tip of a pen or your elbow,” says lead author Dr. Christopher Kandel, fellow, department of infectious diseases, University of Toronto. “Educating the public about the importance of hand hygiene when in a hospital may also help reduce the rate of colonization.”
“Elevator buttons as unrecognized sources of bacterial colonization in hospitals” was published July 8 in the Open Medicine Journal, Vol. 8, No. 3 (2014).
