Podcast 580:  Origin of PPE  

<p><strong>Contributor: Michael Hunt, MD</strong></p> <p><strong>Educational Pearls:</strong></p> <ul> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">PPE, or personal protective equipment, has become a major talking point since the emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID 19).</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">While ubiquitous now, there was not always equipment to protect health care providers or patients from infectious exposures.</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">The invention of  surgical gloves are credited to surgeon William Halsted. He developed gloves because one of his assistants (and later wife), Carol Hampton, was having severe irritation due to a caustic pre-op disinfecting process. They developed the rubber glove for Hampton which garnered popularity, and by the early 20</span><span style= "font-weight: 400;">th</span> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">century, half of surgeons were using rubber gloves.</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Surgical masks came around during the same period as gloves. By 1919 about half of all surgeons were using masks, protecting themselves and their patients from infectious transmissions.</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">The simple advent of masks and gloves led to incredible reductions in morbidity and mortality in surgical cases. Now these simple barriers are key in the prevention of further transmitting of COVID-19.</span></li> </ul> <p><strong>References</strong></p> <p><a href= "https://disappearingspoon.podbean.com/e/glove-at-first-sight/"><strong> 1</strong></a><strong>.</strong> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">Kean, Sam. “Glove at First Sight.”</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">podbean.com</span></em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">, 27 Apr. 2020, disappearingspoon.podbean.com/e/glove-at-first-sight/.</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Summarized by Jackson Roos, MS4 | Edited by Erik Verzemnieks, MD</span></em></p>