• Rungsun Rerknimitr, Sorapat Eakthunyasakul, Pongpan Nunthapisud, and Pradermchai Kongkam.
• Gastroenterology Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand. rungsun@pol.net
• World J Gastroentero. 2006 Jul 14; 12 (26): 4199-202.

AimTo compare the efficacy of enzymatic detergent with chlorhexidine for gastroscope bacterial decontamination.MethodsA prospective randomized controlled study was undertaken to evaluate the ability of these 2 agents to achieve high level disinfection in a gastroscope. A total of 260 samples were collected from 5 different gastroscopes. Manual cleaning was done for 10 min with these 2 agents separately (n = 130 each). Then all specimens underwent 2% glutaraldehyde soaking for 20 min. After 70% alcohol was rinsed, sterile normal saline was flushed into each gastroscope channel and 40 mL of sample was collected. The sample was sent for aerobic bacterial culture after membrane was filtered. A colony count greater than 200 cfu/mL was considered significant.ResultsThe positive culture rate was 4.6% in the enzymatic detergent arm and 3.1% in the chlorhexidine arm. Pseudomonas species were the main organism detected from both groups (60%). Multiple organisms were found from 4 specimens (enzymatic detergent arm = 1, chlorhexidine arm = 3).ConclusionThe contamination rate of both types of cleaning solution is equivalent.

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