The thermal insulating effects of five dental gloves

On occasions within the ease reports of the various medico-legal defence or ganizations mention is made of burns to the oral soft tissues arising from contact with a heated instrument. Good cross infection control dictates tha t the dentist should be gloved whilst treating patients. No study has to da te examined the thermal insulating effect of wearing dental procedure glove s although double gloving is known to blunt temperature perception. It was the purpose of this work to compare the degree of thermal insulation afford ed by five makes of gloves (Biogel-D, Featherlite, Healthline, Microtouch a nd Tru-Touch). Measurement of temperature rises at 15,, 30 and 60s were mad e when a copper cylinder, at ambient room temperature, containing an iron/c onstantan thermocouple was placed upon a 2.35 kg aluminium block maintained at 50 degrees C by a thermostatically controlled electrical heating elemen t. This measurement was initially performed, on 10 separate occasions, with the aluminium block and copper cylinder in direct contact (Control). This arrangement was then modified to investigate the effects of the various glo ves by placing a circular mat of each glove material, harvested from the pa lm of each glove, between the block and cylinder. For each glove, 10 sets o f observations were made using a different circular mat of glove material w hose thickness had been previously determined. An analysis of variance iden tified highly significant (P < 0.001) differences between the temperature r ise of the control and experimental groups. The degree of thermal insulatio n afforded by each glove type appeared related to the glove thickness. This was confirmed by regression analysis but, although correlation coefficient s of at least 0.91 were recorded, no single relationship best related these two quantities. Glove thermal insulating properties should be considered w hen selecting gloves for use in the surgery.