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Making the Hospital a Safer Place by the Sonochemical Coating of all its Textiles and Medical Devices with Antibacterial Nanoparticles

Aharon Gedanken

Sonochemistry is an excellent technique to coat nanomaterials on various substrates, imparting new properties to the substrates. After a short demonstration of coating NPs on ceramics and stainless steel, I'll present the coating of textiles such as polyester, cotton, and nylon.
In all cases a homogeneous coating of NPs was achieved.Lately, the FDA shows less enthusiasm towards nanoAg, as a result, we have moved to NPs of ZnO, and CuO as antibacterial agents. They were coated on the abovementioned fabrics and showed excellent antibacterial properties. The coated textiles were examined for the changes in the mechanical strength of the fabric. A special attention was dedicated to the question whether the NPs are leaching off the fabric when washed repeatedly. The coated CuO NPs on cotton underwent 65 washing cycles at 750C in water in a Hospital washing machine, no NPs were found in the washing solution and the antibacterial
behavior was maintained. Recently, an experiment was conducted at PIGOROV Hospital in Sofia, Bulgaria in which one operation room was equipped with antibacterial textiles, namely, bed sheets, pajamas, pillow cover, and bed cover. 22 Patients in this operation room were probed for bacterial infections. Their infection level was compared with 17 control patient that were using regular textiles. The results are demonstrating that a lower infection level is observed for those patient exposed to the antibacterial textiles