Professors Create New Way to Make Hospital Beds Germ Resistant

While hospitals are known for being sterile environments to help combat illness, it does not mean that they are free of germs and bacteria, particularly hospital beds and gowns. On average 1.7 million Americans and 3.5 million Europeans will be infected by dangerous bacteria that have used their bed or gown as a sort of conduit. While it is not always deadly, it is estimated that about 98,000 patients in the United States will die due to hospitalized acquired infections. (Health care-associated infections)

Most bedding and gowns used in hospitals have some sort of antibacterial coating applied to them, but unfortunately, this coating tends to wash way after only about 15 cleaning cycles.

In order to combat these problems, chemistry professors Aharon Gedanken and Ilana Perelshtei of Bar-Ilan University have created a new way to make these materials used in hospitals more resistant to bacteria.

The method Gedanken and Perelshtei have created uses a physical phenomenon known as cavitation. Using ultrasound waves, they can create rapid changes in pressure in a liquid and form small, vapor filled cavities. Once these cavities are formed, antibacterial chemicals can be propelled into the molecular structure of the fabric at a remarkable speed. The technique is incredibly versatile because it can be used with any type of fabric during the final manufacturing processes.

The most current processes to give fabrics antibacterial properties are extrusion, where silver, copper or zinc particles are added into the raw material used to create synthetic fibers, and “fabric finishing,” or adding an antibacterial liquid to the manufacturing process, which then binds with the materials chemically.

These methods are limited to only a few materials, excluding cotton and nylon, and tend to be very polluting, mainly because the chemicals can bleed out of the material.

The cavitation method allows for materials to be washed up to 65 to 100 cleaning cycles, depending on the temperatures used to wash the fabrics.

For more information about cavitation, click here. 


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