Efficacy of pulsed-xenon ultraviolet light on reduction of Mycobacterium fortuitum

OBJECTIVES: Hospitals and healthcare facilities rely largely on isolation and environmental disinfection to prevent transmission of pathogens. The use of no-touch technology is an accepted practice for environmental decontamination in medical care facilities, but little has been published about the effect of ultraviolet light generated by a portable pulsed-xenon device use on Mycobacteria. We used Mycobacterium fortuitum which is more resistant to ultraviolet radiation and less virulent than Mycobacterium tuberculosis, to determine the effectiveness of portable pulsed-xenon devices on Mycobacterium in a laboratory environment. METHODS: To determine the effectiveness of pulsed-xenon devices, we measured the bactericidal effect of pulsed-xenon devices on Mycobacterium fortuitum. RESULTS: In five separate experiments irradiating an average of 10(6) organisms, the mean (standard deviation) log-kill at 5 min was 3.98 (0.60), at 10 min was 4.96 (0.42), and at 15 min was 5.64 (0.52). CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate that using pulsed-xenon devices is a highly effective modality to reduce microbial counts with this relatively ultraviolet germicidal irradiation–resistant mycobacterium in a time-dependent manner.