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Latex gloves have become the standard glove used in healthcare for several very good reasons. These include:
There is no other glove material currently available that matches all these attributes In recognition of the increasing problem of latex allergy, The UK Medical Devices Agency issued a Bulletin in 1996 to make people working in the healthcare setting more aware of this issue, in particular the use of latex gloves (1). Two years later, in 1998, the problem of glove powder [LINK to powder page] prompted the MDA to issue a Safety Notice, which effectively led to the withdrawal of powdered latex gloves in UK hospitals (2). Around the same time, manufacturers reduced the amount of protein in medical gloves, and recent use of so-called ‘low-protein powder-free’ gloves has led to a marked reduction in the number of healthcare workers presenting with suspected latex allergy (3). Although ‘low-protein powder-free’ latex gloves appear unlikely to make people sensitised to NRL, they cannot be considered safe to use on patients who are already sensitised because in this situation it is simply not known how much NRL protein is required to trigger an allergic reaction ( What is latex allergy?). At present, there is no clear agreement in the UK whether healthcare should:
These decisions are for each individual healthcare organisation to make. In recent years, synthetic gloves have become more readily available, user-friendly and cost-competitive, and some healthcare establishments have now made a decision to use these routinely rather than latex gloves (4). In 2005, the Partnership Support Unit of the Scottish Executive Health Department released, as part of the Managing Health at Work PIN, a document that provides guidance on glove choice for staff working in NHS Scotland. This document advises that latex gloves may continue to be used when justified by risk assessment, but that unnecessary routine use of latex gloves should be identified and discouraged (5)
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