CAVEATS
High infection rate, other factors may limit generalizability
The overall rate of infection in this study (9%) was higher than that found in the studies from emergency medicine and dermatology literature cited earlier.2-4 A similarly high infection rate has been found in other studies of minor surgery by Heal et al, including a 2006 study that showed a wound infection rate of 8.6%.10 The significance of the higher infection rate is unknown, but there is no clear reason why nonsterile gloves might be less effective in preventing infection in environments with lower infection rates.
This was not a double-blinded study, and clinicians might change their behavior during a procedure depending on the type of gloves they are wearing. The sterile gloves used in this study contained powder, while the nonsterile gloves were powderless, but this variable is not known to affect infection rates. A study of Mohs surgery avoided this variable by only using powderless gloves; outcomes were similar in terms of the difference in infection rate between sterile and nonsterile gloves.4
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