Quantitative assessment of environmental blood contamination in interventional radiology operating rooms: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND

Health care-associated infections remain a global threat to patient safety, with contaminated environmental surfaces serving as important pathogen transmission vectors. Interventional radiology operating rooms are high-frequency blood exposure settings, yet quantitative contamination data remain scarce. This study applied a quantitative occult blood detection method to assess environmental blood contamination in interventional operating rooms.

METHODS

A quantitative occult blood detection method (HGBTEST WIPES with AI-based image analysis) measured hemoglobin residues at 142 sampling sites (44 operating tables, 37C-arms, 61 other surfaces) across 4 operating rooms at a tertiary hospital. Contamination levels were graded using quartile-based thresholds.

RESULTS

Environmental blood contamination was widespread (median: 62.21 μg/cm², interquartile range [IQR]: 41.37-96.94; mean ± SD: 142.75 ± 337.77; range: 1.23-3026.98 μg/cm²). Operating tables showed the highest contamination (median: 71.19 μg/cm², IQR: 38.47-120.25), followed by other surfaces (median: 66.60 μg/cm², IQR: 46.09-101.02) and C-arms (median: 57.99 μg/cm², IQR: 39.42-67.54).

CONCLUSIONS

This study reveals distribution patterns of environmental blood contamination in interventional radiology operating rooms and proposes 3 hypothetical contamination pathways. The Pareto distribution pattern suggests optimized resource allocation through targeted cleaning, while the proposed pathways indicate the necessity of differentiated prevention strategies for improving environmental quality.