A Guide for the Right Medical Gloves

dental gloves

Hands are the key pathway for transmission of diseases. As a medical health professional, you need to ensure that there is no cross-contamination happening. This is why the use of the right kind of medical gloves is important.

Whether you are a caregiver or a healthcare professional, using the gloves specifically made for the task for instance, dental gloves is significant. But when it comes to picking the ideal gloves for medical use, there are certain things that need to be considered.

Today, we are here to discuss the right types of medical gloves and how you can choose one. Continue to read till the end to find out all about it.

How to Select the Right Glove Option for Medical Use?

Medical gloves are disposable and are thrown away right after use. Now, when it comes to disposable medical gloves, there are quite a few varieties of gloves available which can make it difficult for you to select the right one.

There are basically three kinds of medical gloves – latex, vinyl and nitrile gloves. The level of comfort, protection, durability and other factors vary from one type of glove to another. According to your medical task, the choice of gloves can also differ.

Let’s take a look at the three kinds and compare a few aspects of these varieties of gloves.

Latex Gloves – Latex is a natural material gloves which are made out of rubber. They offer great comfort and flexibility. Latex gloves are also quite fitting and offer tactile sensitivity.

They can give protection against bacteria and viruses making them ideal for medical use.

Vinyl Gloves – Vinyl is made out of synthetic material and are also referred to as synthetic gloves. They offer comfortable fit and are pretty cost-efficient as well.

Vinyl gloves give your protection against harmful chemicals. Therefore, if you work in medical laboratories and come in close contact with chemicals, a Vinyl glove is suggested for use.

Nitrile Gloves – Yet again nitrile gloves are also made out of synthetic material. They are quite stretchy and thus, there’s no issue of size when you for Nitrile gloves. Nitrile gloves are also very durable and can last for a long time.

These gloves protect your hands against viruses and chemicals.

To choose Latex or Latex-free Gloves?

When it comes to choosing latex gloves, there is one important thing that you need to consider. Latex is known for causing skin allergies in some people and because of which they have been banned to be used in many medical facilities.

However, back in the day, latex gloves were the only standard medical gloves available and they used to serve the medical purpose perfectly. But later it was found that some people were developing allergic reactions to the latex material.

Soon, there was a drop of latex gloves in the market as other medical glove options came into existence. Today, although latex gloves are available for medical use, it is not the first choice for medical gloves.

Many, in fact, opt for latex free gloves as a substitute for latex made medical gloves.

Powdered or Powdered-free Gloves?

Furthermore, it was found that the presence of powdered coating in medical gloves was the primary cause of allergic reaction in healthcare professionals. The powder coating was generally lycopodium powder or talc that were used for easy wearing of gloves.

Later, when the issue of allergy was detected from this powder coated gloves, companies substituted these ingredients with corn starch powder material. Corn starch was less irritable coating than other powder coatings found in gloves.

However, even corn starch caused the issue of allergic reactions on skin tissues, that’s when companies introduced powder-free gloves in the market for medical use.

Today, powder-free gloves are popularly used in performance for sensitive medical tasks such as surgeries and other procedures. The dental gloves are also powder-free.  

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