EASE OF DONNING COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE POWDER-FREE SURGICAL GLOVES

There are a wide variety of powder-free gloves that can now be used by surgeons. The purpose of this study was to quantify the forces requir ed to don these powder-free surgical gloves. The lowest donning forces for wet hands was encountered with powder-free gloves coated with a h ydrogel polymer. In addition, the hydrogel coated gloves exhibited the least increase in donning forces from dry hands to wet hands. While g reater forces were encountered with the other commercially available p owder-free gloves than the hydrogel coated gloves, they all could be s afely donned on dry hands without tearing. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.