MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATION - Medical Device Daily

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Tru-D shows promise for
cleaning hospital rooms
By AMANDA PEDERSEN
Medical Device Daily Staff Writer
A device made by Lumalier (Memphis, Tennessee) is
showing promise in its ability to clean hospital rooms using
ultraviolet germicidal energy to decontaminate air and surfaces.
Lumalier reported that in a study presented at the 49th
Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and
Chemotherapy in San Francisco, researchers used its
mobile, automated UV device to decontaminate hospital
rooms at the Cleveland Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center
in Ohio and analyzed its ability to remove troublesome bacteria,
including C. difficile spores. According to the company,
the device, known as Tru-D, uses reflected UVC germicidal
energy to decontaminate air and surfaces, including
those in primary shadows.
Chuck Dunn, president/CEO of Lumalier, told Medical
Device Daily that the Tru-D was invented by Jeffrey Deal,
MD, an ear, nose and throat surgeon that in his procedures
– a lot of which involved young children – he was having
infection problems. Deal sourced those problems of infection
to the environmental surfaces in his operating room
suite, which often weren’t being cleaned properly, Dunn
said. He said the surfaces the Tru-D is designed to clean are
considered non-critical surfaces.
The company developed a method of measuring
reflected dose throughout the space to ensure that shadows
in a complex environment would be disinfected, Dunn
said. By complex environment, he means all of the hoses,
tubes, poles, keyboards found in the operating room environment.
Dunn added that very often the machines that get
touched most with hands are the ones that environmental
services workers, or cleaners, are afraid to touch.
Now, the device is beginning to attract attention from
researchers.
Curtis Donskey, MD, chair of the infection control committee
at the Cleveland VA Medical Center, said that Tru-D
is a “novel method for cleaning hospital rooms . . . easy to
use . . . and more effective than standard disinfection for
removing hardy bacteria.” According to Donskey, the Tru-D
was able to decontaminate all surfaces in 40 hospital
rooms, including hard-to-clean surfaces such as the undersides
of tables.” Lumalier noted that 18% of sites under the
edges of bedside tables were still contaminated with MRSA
after routine hospital cleaning, versus 0% after Tru-D use.
Research revealed that disinfection with Tru-D reduced the
frequency of positive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE)
cultures by 89%, the company said.
“C. difficile spores are especially challenging for hospital
staff,” Donskey said. On inoculated surfaces, application
MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATION 2010
of Tru-D using the spore setting consistently reduced
recovery of C. difficile spores and MRSA by about two to
three logs, the company noted. Similar VRE reduction was
achieved in about half the time using a lower dose setting.
“The UV device is computerized and can assess how much
is needed for decontamination by measuring the reflected
UV radiation from surfaces in the room,” Donskey said. “It’s
inexpensive to operate and requires no cleaning supplies.”
After viewing results, Donskey requested the purchase of
several Tru-D units for the Cleveland VA Medical Center,
Lumalier said.
Dunn told MDD that for now, Lumalier is not making
claims that the Tru-D reduces hospital-acquired infections,
however that is a possibility in the future, if the company
obtains the data to back up such claims.
“At present, the studies and the research are simply in
regard to our ability to clean. We can state that we reduce
pathogens – that’s clear that we do – we cannot state that
that reduction of pathogens may or will lead to a reduction
of hospital-acquired infections because we don’t have that
data yet,” Dunn said.
However, such data might not be that far off for
Lumalier. Dunn said Donskey’s study is about to enter its
third phase during which he will attempt to identify
whether or not the Tru-D reduces infections.
“UVC radiation is an exciting new technology for disinfecting
patient rooms and contaminated surfaces in healthcare,”
said Luke Chen, assistant professor of medicine in
the Division of Infectious Diseases at Duke University
Medical Center. “The Tru-D device demonstrated consistency
and rapidity in killing microorganisms. There is potential
to use this technology to rapidly clean and turn around
patient rooms, clinic space or waiting rooms.”
John Boyce, MD, chief of the Infectious Diseases Section
at the Hospital of Saint Raphael and clinical professor of
medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, said that the
device is easy to employ and that it can reduce the number
of positive bacterial cultures “substantially.”
According to Dunn, there are currently three ways to
clean a hospital room:
• mop and bucket, spray and wipe, which Dunn says is
not a very effective method;
• vaporized hydrogen peroxide, a new technology
requiring specially-trained operators and four to six hours
to clean a room and the hydrogen peroxide cannot be let
out of the room, making it an effective method, but not
practical for use in the quick room turn environment of
healthcare, Dunn said.
• Tru-D, which Dunn says is “very promising” to be both
effective and fast.
Boyce authored a 2008 disinfection study of vaporized
hydrogen peroxide. “The UV radiation device has the potential
to be effective, faster, and less expensive to operate,” he
said.
The company noted that Deal worked closely with
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