UV technology: a new frontier in patient safety?

In a recent blog, Dr Jon Otter, interim head of operations, infection prevention and control at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, asked is it: ‘time to go shopping for a UV-C system?’1 He commented that the long-awaited ‘Benefits of Terminal Room Disinfection’ (BETR-D) randomised controlled trial of a UV-C automated room decon (ARD) system “firms up the importance of environmental contamination in transmission, and demonstrates additional benefit of UV-C over and above enhanced conventional methods.”

There is a growing body of research suggesting that UV-C could offer hospitals an effective method of non-touch disinfection, helping to reduce contamination and ultimately reduce transmission of healthcareassociated infection. Published in The Lancet and funded by the CDC,2 the BETR-D clinical trial proved that the Tru-D system (short for ‘total room ultraviolet disinfection’) can cut transmission of four major superbugs by a cumulative 30%. 

The most comprehensive study on UV-C disinfection to date, the BETR-D study was a cluster randomised, multicentre crossover study to evaluate the impact of enhanced terminal room disinfection on acquisition and infection caused by multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs).