Glove perforation during plastic surgery.

Intraoperative perforation of surgical gloves is common. Nine hundred and forty surgical gloves were tested after 100 consecutive plastic surgical operations, each involving a surgeon, a variable number of assistants and a scrub nurse. In the first 52 operations, single gloves were used and 21.5% of the staff were found to have a perforated glove. In the second 48 operations, double gloves were used by all members of the surgical team and the number with perforations (of both inner and outer gloves) was reduced to 9%. Most perforations occurred on the dorsum of the hand and fingers and on the thumb tip, especially in the non-dominant hand. The risk of acquiring AIDS due to glove perforation is low but the consequences of such an event could be lethal.