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Medical gloves and surgical gloves are the two types of disposable gloves that are widely used in the medical world. During medical examinations, these gloves are worn by the doctors and the medical team to avoid any direct contact with the patient as contaminations may occur which might affect either the patient or the doctor/medical examination team member. Surgical gloves are likewise worn during surgeries in order to prevent infections that might get transferred between a patient and healthcare professionals. Medical gloves are sometimes also referred to as examination gloves as well, in order to differentiate them from the surgical gloves that are only used during surgeries. It is essential that surgical gloves are of the highest quality and resistant to unwanted cuts and scrapes. They should also be made with high precision for more extensive medical work. On the other hand, examination gloves can afford to be of less precision. For this reason, they are also more cheaply available. These gloves are disposable and they should be used only once for a single time. The essential properties of surgical and medical gloves Surgical and medical gloves should have the following properties Since the main purpose of these gloves is to aid in safe surgery and medical examination, they should be made very elastic, in a way that they easily fit into the different hand sizes of the doctors and medical practitioners. The gloves should also be quite thick and not have even a single micro or minute pore in them. The gloves should also be flexible and durable at the same time. They should not just tear away during usage. They should also have a high degree of finer touch sensitivity. Another very important property that they should have is that the gloves should not lead to any type of allergic reaction. When medical procedures are done with, the gloves should be conveniently removable and disposable. The disposed gloves should also be easily degradable, not causing any harmful impact on the environment. Materials used for making surgical and medical gloves There are a number of materials that are used for making medical or surgical gloves. These include latex, nitrile, neoprene and vinyl rubbers. Over the years, gloves made of latex have been found to cause skin allergies to doctors and medical practitioners. For this reason, many doctors nowadays prefer using surgical and medical gloves that are made of materials other than latex. However, latex gloves still enjoy a distinct popularity due to the distinct advantages offered by them. Another reason to prefer latex gloves over other materials is that they are also very cheaply available when compared to the other materials. There are two distinct types of latex gloves available in the market – powdered and powder-free hand gloves. The powdered gloves are quite easy to wear as they employ cornstarch for the purpose of lubrication. However, when worn for a long time, the powdered gloves can lead to skin reactions and allergies. Since cornstarch is used inside these gloves to aid lubrication and facilitate easy usage, the hands must be kept moisture-free. On the other hand, the powder-free medical and surgical hand gloves require special attention during usage as they may break and tear. Hence one should be extremely careful while opting for powder-free gloves and only choose the best quality products even if they are of a higher price range. Many doctors nowadays prefer hand gloves made of vinyl to avoid the allergic side effects of wearing latex gloves. The current statistics on the usage of medical and surgical gloves reveal that latex surgical gloves still enjoy maximum popularity among users, even though they sometimes might lead to skin allergies. While glove manufacturers did try to come up with alternate means to produce high quality non-latex gloves that provide with the same level of sensitivity, flexibility and control as the latex ones, they failed to do so in the long run. A number of chemical processes have been tried out in recent times to reduce the allergic tendencies to a great deal. One of the substances that have been proposed as a strong substitute for latex made gloves is isoprene. Isoprene is nowadays often used for manufacturing high grade medical and surgical gloves as it has the same chemical structure like that of the natural rubber latex. Nevertheless, when compared to natural rubber latex, gloves made of isoprene tend to be somewhat more expensive. There are a number of advantages of wearing isoprene gloves. For this reason, some may even prefer wearing them over latex-made gloves or gloves made of other substances. People who often tend to wear these gloves include professionals like doctors, physicians, catheter customers, care providers, dental practitioners, lab specialists, pharmacy technicians and save employees. Another material used for making surgical and medical gloves that has found many takers in the recent times is nitrile. While latex has always been the number one choice for most medical practitioners, nitrile gloves have been recently proven to provide medical professionals with the maximum level of security against microbes and other harmful components. Nitrile gloves offer some of the strongest protection against various pathogens like bacteria, viruses or contact bodily fluids that may carry disease causing agents. Gloves made of nitrile also protect against contamination from chemical substances like oils or different types of solvents. However, studies have also shown that nitrile medical gloves can have some amount of pinhole defects. Tested under high sensitivity evaluation scales, nitrile gloves were shown to have 2% of pre-existing defects that were detected around the thumb, the ring finger and the middle finger region. Nevertheless, it was still proven nitrile gloves have some of the least amount of such pre-existing defects, and as a result, they were deemed as some of the most reliable. Although tests have been conducted on all types of gloves that are currently used in the medical community, the nitrile gloves have been proven to have the maximum scores in terms of defense against various pathogens. The Surgical Gloves are extensively used for surgical procedures whereas examination gloves are generally used for testing and diagnosis procedures.
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