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Medical Gloves

 
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Medical gloves
 
 
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Medical gloves are medical safety accessories that ensure sanitary
Sanitation

Sanitation is the hygienic means of preventing human contact from the hazards of wastes to promote health. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease....
 hospital
Hospital

A hospital is an institution for health care providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment, and often but not always providing for longer-term patient stays....
 conditions by limiting patients'
Patient

A patient is any person who receives medical attention, care, or Therapy. The person is most often illness or injured and in need of treatment by a physician or other Health care provider, although one who is visiting a physician for a routine check-up may also be viewed as a patient....
 exposure to infectious
Infection

An infection is the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species. In an infection, the infecting organism seeks to utilize the host resources to multiply ....
 matter. They also serve to protect health professionals from disease through contact with bodily fluid
Bodily fluid

Bodily fluids listed below are found in the bodies of men and/or women. Some may be found in animals as well. They include fluids that are excretion or secretion from the body as well as fluids that normally are not....
s.

Medical gloves are traditionally made of latex
LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language and Word processor for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as ....
 and powdered with cornstarch
Cornstarch

Cornstarch, or cornflour, is the starch of the corn grain. It is also grown from the endosperm, or white heart, of the corn seed. It has a distinctive appearance and feel when mixed raw with water or milk, giving easily to gentle pressure but resisting sudden pressure ....
 to lubricate the gloves, making them easier to don Cornstarch replaced Lycopodium
Lycopodium

Lycopodium is a genus of clubmosses, also known as ground pines, in the family Lycopodiaceae, a family of fern-allies . They are flowerless, vascular, terrestrial or epiphytic plants, with widely-branched, erect, prostrate or creeping stems, with small, simple, needle-like or scale-like leaf that cover the stem and branches thickly....
 powder and/or talc but since cornstarch can also impede healing if it gets into tissues (as during surgery), non-powdered gloves are being used more often during surgery and other sensitive procedures.






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Disposable Nitrile Glove
Medical gloves are medical safety accessories that ensure sanitary
Sanitation

Sanitation is the hygienic means of preventing human contact from the hazards of wastes to promote health. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease....
 hospital
Hospital

A hospital is an institution for health care providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment, and often but not always providing for longer-term patient stays....
 conditions by limiting patients'
Patient

A patient is any person who receives medical attention, care, or Therapy. The person is most often illness or injured and in need of treatment by a physician or other Health care provider, although one who is visiting a physician for a routine check-up may also be viewed as a patient....
 exposure to infectious
Infection

An infection is the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species. In an infection, the infecting organism seeks to utilize the host resources to multiply ....
 matter. They also serve to protect health professionals from disease through contact with bodily fluid
Bodily fluid

Bodily fluids listed below are found in the bodies of men and/or women. Some may be found in animals as well. They include fluids that are excretion or secretion from the body as well as fluids that normally are not....
s.

Medical gloves are traditionally made of latex
LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language and Word processor for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as ....
 and powdered with cornstarch
Cornstarch

Cornstarch, or cornflour, is the starch of the corn grain. It is also grown from the endosperm, or white heart, of the corn seed. It has a distinctive appearance and feel when mixed raw with water or milk, giving easily to gentle pressure but resisting sudden pressure ....
 to lubricate the gloves, making them easier to don Cornstarch replaced Lycopodium
Lycopodium

Lycopodium is a genus of clubmosses, also known as ground pines, in the family Lycopodiaceae, a family of fern-allies . They are flowerless, vascular, terrestrial or epiphytic plants, with widely-branched, erect, prostrate or creeping stems, with small, simple, needle-like or scale-like leaf that cover the stem and branches thickly....
 powder and/or talc but since cornstarch can also impede healing if it gets into tissues (as during surgery), non-powdered gloves are being used more often during surgery and other sensitive procedures. Special manufacturing processes are used to compensate for the lack of powder.

There are two main types of gloves: exam, and surgical. Surgical gloves have more precise sizing (numbered sizing, generally from size 5.5 to size 9), and are made to higher specifications.

Due to the increasing rate of latex allergy
Latex allergy

Latex allergy is a medical term encompassing a range of allergic reactions to natural rubber latex....
 among health professionals as well as in the general population, there has been an increasing move to gloves made of non-latex materials such as vinyl
Vinyl

A vinyl compound is any organic compound that contains a vinyl group , −CarbonHydrogenCovalent bondCH2. These are derivatives of ethene, CH2=CH2, with one hydrogen atom replaced with some other group....
 or nitrile rubber
Nitrile rubber

Nitrile rubber, or Buna-N, is a synthetic rubber copolymer of acrylonitrile and butadiene. Some trade names are: Nipol, Krynac and Europrene....
. However, these gloves have not yet replaced latex gloves in surgical procedures, as gloves made of alternate materials generally do not fully match the fine control or greater sensitivity to touch available with latex
LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language and Word processor for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as ....
 surgical gloves. High-grade non-latex gloves (such as nitrile gloves) also cost two or more times the price of their latex counterparts, a fact that has often prevented switching to these alternate materials in cost-sensitive environments, such as many hospitals.

Powder-free medical gloves are also used in medical cleanroom environments, where the need for cleanliness is often similar to that in a sensitive medical environment. Similar but specially tested gloves are used in electronics cleanrooms.

History

In 1894, sterilized rubber gloves were used in hospitals for the first time. They were introduced because of Joseph Lister's germ
Germ

germ can mean:* Microorganism, especially a pathogen; see Germ theory of disease* germ, a cell that has all the information to grow into a complete adult organism...
 theory. The first disposable medical gloves were manufactured in 1964 by Ansell
Ansell

Ansell Limited is a Multinational corporation company specialising in Health care....
.

See also

  • Glove
    Glove

    A glove is a type of garment which covers the hand of a human. Gloves have separate sheaths or openings for each finger and the thumb; if there is an opening but no covering sheath for each finger they are called "fingerless gloves"....
  • Rubber glove
    Rubber glove

    A rubber glove is a glove made out of rubber. Its primary purpose is protection of the hands while performing tasks involving chemicals. Rubber gloves are worn during dishwashing to protect the hands from detergent and allow the use of hotter water....


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