Air dispersed essential oils combined with standard sanitization procedures for environmental microbiota control in nosocomial hospitalization rooms

Objective: Environmental bacterial contaminant microorganisms are an ongoing problem in hospitals. Essential oil vapours (EO) may help reducing this type of contamination. Aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of nebulized selected essential oils (EO) in reducing the microbial contamination in residential health care house rooms. Design: The study was carried out in a two-story 112-bed tertiary care structure (approximately 1060 m2). Contamination in rooms and corridors was monitored for a total of n = 5 months, including a starting baseline sampling and one end-study point, and without combined treatment (standard sanitization alone). Contact slides were collected for microbiological analysis. Results: Reductions in both bacterial and fungal contamination were observed between rooms cleaned using standard sanitization alone or in combination with essential oils nebulization (average 90% decrease for total count, P < 0.01; 90% for yeasts and molds, P < 0.05). Decreases of antibiotic (70%), mucolytic (100%), bronchodilators (100%), and steroidal (67%) and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (33%) prescriptions were observed, with no adverse effects on patients. Conclusions: The selected EO composition is effective in reducing both the environmental microbial contamination and pharmaceutical drugs consumption in a nosocomial health care house. This study demonstrates that aerial EO diffusion combined with standard sanitization procedures, has great potential to reduce the microbial contamination in critical hospital environments such as hospitalization rooms.