Publication trends in hand hygiene: Pandemics serve as wake-up calls

Introduction: Hand hygiene with alcohol-based handrub (ABHR) is the global standard of care in preventing healthcare-associated infections that are known among the most common adverse events in healthcare settings. There has been a growing body of knowledge and evidence in this area in the past few decades in order to improve this lifesaving action. Objectives: To investigate the annual number of publications using hand hygiene-related keywords in the medical literature and analyze publication trends in this field. Methods: This review is based on Medline search until December 2020, using MEdical Subject Headings (MESH) search terms and keywords. We searched the most commonly used words to describe hand hygiene and analyzed the number of publications retrieved yearly. Results: From 1921 to December 2020, we found 12,737 publications using hand hygiene-related keywords. The most prevalent keywords were hand hygiene, hand disinfection, hand washing, handrub, hand sanitizer and ABHR. Searching all keywords revealed that the number of publications in the field of hand hygiene has doubled in 2020 compared to 2019. We observed a significant growth in using the hand hygiene keyword, over the past 20 years, with a major peak in 2020. Conclusion: Advances in the hand hygiene literature have been remarkable over the past few years and particularly significant during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. We identified significant changes over time, with a major shift from using soap and water to the preference of ABHR. Higher peaks of research studies during the recent major pandemics, in particular the COVID-19, highlight the capacity for continuous improvements in hand hygiene science and practices.