ACTPRAS

Background

There is clinical uncertainty about whether Povidone-Iodine or Chlorhexidine based solutions should be used for skin prep prior to upper extremity surgery.

Alcoholic chlorhexidine is the most efficacious prep for reducing risk of surgical site infection in dirty, contaminated and clean-contaminated surgery but this is not immediately applicable to (clean) hand surgery.

Also, there are safety concerns over alcoholic and chlorhexidine preps in tourniquet-controlled upper limb surgery which warrants further investigation.

Question

Which antiseptic skin prep is ideal for patients undergoing upper extremity surgery?

How can I get involved?

With colleagues in the UK, we are running a prospective audit of skin antiseptics in upper limb surgery.

Audit just 20 cases (trauma or elective) to gain co-authorship on the publication(s).

Register your interest here

Responsibilities of a collaborator to be PubMed cited

You will need to:

• Gain support from your department (e.g. consultant body).
• Collect data on 20 consecutive patients (adults or children) undergoing any form of upper limb surgery distal to the shoulder joint and follow-up them up for 3 months. More information will be provided to collaborators.
• Upload anonymised information to a REDCap database.

NB – Contributing data with a high missing data rate will result in an acknowledgement and certificate rather than co-authorship.

Benefits

• Certificate of involvement will be provided on completion of the project.
• Co-authorship on the publication(s) directly attributable to the collected data.
• Cited as a collaborator on any presentation(s) relating to these data.
• Option to present local data separately.