Your Doctor Wearing a Tie? Look Out!

From Reuters:

Physicians' Neckties Often Contaminated With Pathogenic Bacteria NEW YORK (Reuters Health) May 24 - A change in fashion may decrease nosocomial spread of infections, according to a presentation at the 104th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. That's because neckties worn by clinicians were found to be eight times more likely to harbor pathogens than were those of hospital workers not normally in contact with patients. While doing a clinical rotation at New York Hospital at Queens, lead author Steven Nurkin, a medical student at the American-Technion Program at the Bruce Rappaport Facility of Medicine in Haifa, Israel, noticed that physicians' neckties often come into contact with patients or their bedding. After examining a patient or conducting procedure, he told Reuters Health, "they would wash their hands, and then adjust their tie," perhaps recontaminating their hands. So he and colleagues swabbed 42 neckties worn by clinicians and 10 by security personnel, and dabbed the swabs onto blood agar plates and identified the isolates that grew. Twenty of the clinicians' neckties carried pathogens, including Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Aspergillus. In contrast, the tie of only one security guard carried a single pathogen, S. aureus. Nurkin pointed out that neckties are encouraged because they are believed to project an aura of professionalism and increase patients' confidence, but they may not be cleaned as often as other articles of clothing. Options to reduce the risk of disease transmission, he suggested, include switching to bow-ties or using tie tacks that hold ties to physicians' shirts, decontaminating ties with a "high quality detergent spray that wouldn't ruin the tie," or even using a "necktie condom." Another option would be to abandon neckties altogether. He and his associates are considering further studies with larger sample sizes to confirm their findings. The ASM conference is being held this week in New Orleans.