1191. Hand Hygiene Education: Why Is It so Critical to Tissue Banking?

BACKGROUND: In the United States, the most commonly transplanted tissues are bones, tendons, skin, heart valves, vessels and corneas. Over two million tissue grafts are distributed each year.Efforts to advance tissue transplant safety are less defined compared with organ transplant, and continuously being improved and regulated by national agencies. Environmental contamination, postmortem translocation of microorganisms, cross-contamination, and tissue processing are critical components which can be prevented with hand hygiene education thus preventing the transmission of infectious diseases. Microorganisms from technicians’ skin can potentially result in infection and nontransplantable tissue. This is particularly true of regenerative tissue, such as Vivigen, that undergo no sterilization process. METHODS: A review was done of all 2018 ViviGen culture with these organisms: Bacillus, Cornebacterium, Diptheroids, Propionibacterium, Staphylococcus Coagulase negative, and Streptococcus viridians defined as Category 1. RESULTS: In 2018, 384 out of 1418 ViviGen donors were discarded due to positive cultures. Of the 384, 190 were due the presence of a Cat. 1 microorganism in post-processing cultures, for a discard rate of 17.6%. In these donors, preprocessing cultures were initially negative, thus indicating contamination was due to technician contamination. In the first quarter of 2019, and since implementation of Hand Hygiene education, we have already start to see a decline in acquisition of Cat 1 organism for a total reduction of 6% from Q1 of 2018 compared with 2019. CONCLUSION: Tissue banking is a complex process of many steps to assure quality and safety of the tissue. Contamination is critical even when the microorganisms are considered low-virulent skin flora (i.e., Cat 1). This is especially important if these Cat 1 organisms are found in Post-processing cultures of grafts not terminally irradiated or sterilized. Implementation of proper hand hygiene education and aseptic techniques among tissue recovery and processing staff can significantly reduce the bioburden. Furthermore, a reduction in bioburden equates to higher likelihood in honoring the gift of donation in this selfless act of the donor and their loved one while also decreasing the financial loss due to culture results. DISCLOSURES: All authors: No reported disclosures.