Efficacy of five alcohol-based skin antiseptics on sebaceous skin used at shorter application times than the current recommendation of 10 minutes

N.-O. Hübner (1) , O. Assadian (2) , S. A. Grohmann (3) , M. Diab-Elschahawi (2) , A. Kramer (1)

1 Institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine
2 Department of Hospital Hygiene
3 Department of Orthopaedic Surgery

Alcohol-based skin antiseptics are recommended with a minimum application time of 10 min on skin containing high numbers of sebaceous glands. In clinical practice, a 10-min application time is often too long. Therefore, we determined the efficacy of skin antiseptics on the forehead and lower back using shorter application times. Five alcoholic solutions were tested in a double-blind trial for their colony-forming units (cfu) reduction after 3, 4, 5 and 10 min on the forehead of 20 healthy volunteers and the lower back of 10 healthy volunteers and 10 patients against the reference alcohol 70% propan-2-ol, 10 min. After an application time of 3 min, 3/5 (forehead) and 5/5 (lower back) preparations were at least equally as effective compared to the reference alcohol and an application time of 10 min. Alcohol-based skin antiseptics do not require a 10-min application time. For all of the tested antiseptics, a minimum application time of 3 min on sebaceous skin can be recommended.

Mots clés: Life Sciences

Domaines: Maladies infectieuses

N.-O. Hübner, O. Assadian, S. A. Grohmann, M. Diab-Elschahawi, A. Kramer. Efficacy of five alcohol-based skin antiseptics on sebaceous skin used at shorter application times than the current recommendation of 10 minutes. European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, 2011, 30 (7), pp.825-829. ⟨10.1007/s10096-010-1085-x⟩. ⟨hal-00700807⟩