P056 ‘Infection control in anaesthesia: are sterile gowns necessary for spinal procedures? A review of the evidence’
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Aims Sterile gown use during spinal anaesthesia is standard in many UK centres, as recommended by the 2014 Association of Anaesthetists guidelines. However, this is not mandated by international bodies such as the ASA, ASRA, and the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society. Recent evidence, including a randomised controlled trial, found no significant difference in infection rates with or without gowns. The survey by the Association of Anaesthetists and the OAA also highlighted growing support for change. This survey evaluates current infection control practices in our trust and assesses anaesthetists’ receptiveness to revising gown use in light of emerging evidence.. Methods A short, structured survey was developed and distributed using the SurveyMonkey online platform. The questionnaire was designed to gather information on current practices and opinions regarding infection control measures during spinal anaesthesia, with a particular focus on the use of sterile gowns. The survey was disseminated via email to all anaesthetists currently working at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust (WWL). A total of 34 responses were received Results Survey responses showed 100% compliance with hand hygiene and sterile glove use. Face mask usage was reported by 93.94% (31/33), while 90.91% reported wearing a sterile gown for spinal anaesthesia. Compliance with sterile gown use was slightly higher for epidural and combined spinal-epidural (CSE) techniques, at 96.97%. Interestingly, 44% of respondents expressed willingness to reconsider their current gowning practices in light of new evidence or updated guidance. Conclusions While adherence to basic aseptic techniques is high, the use of sterile gowns for neuraxial procedures may vary in practice and attitude. With nearly half of respondents open to change, there is a clear opportunity for re-evaluating current guidelines based on updated evidence and international comparison.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.102 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.015 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".