Occlusive clothing and ultraviolet radiation in hip surgery

In a randomized study of 20 total hip arthroplasties, the staff wore shirts and trousers of a fabric impervious to bacteria underneath operating gowns of a non-woven material. Volumetric air sampling demonstrated a low number of colony-forming units with this clothing, further reduced by ultraviolet radiation to below 10 colony-forming units/m3, the upper limit of "ultraclean air," in all the cases (median 2.6, range 1.1-7.1).