A study in the USA in 2004 performed post-usage examination and testing of surgeons’ gloves after routine surgical procedures. The results revealed higher after-use defects for non-latex compared with latex disposable gloves [32]. Compared with NRL gloves, the odds ratio for defects was 1.39 (95% confidence interval 1.12–1.73) for neoprene and 1.90 (95% confidence interval 1.15–3.13) for nitrile gloves. In addition, the surgeons reported significantly greater satisfaction with regard to factors such as quality, safety and durability for latex compared with latex examination gloves. These results should probably be treated with caution because the surgeons had never used non-latex gloves before for routine surgery (acknowledged by the authors as a possible bias) and only 215 nitrile gloves were used compared to 2,647 latex and 3,624 neoprene gloves. In addition, the main difference in the study was in visible leaks, with no significant difference in water leaks, which may be explained by the low tear propagation strength of nitrile/neoprene. Similar differences between neoprene and NRL have been demonstrated in another study [33] where it was noted that punctures in neoprene gloves were detected more readily by surgeons than punctures in NRL gloves.
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