New Century Spine and Outpatient Surgical Institute is the first free-standing surgery center to use Indigo-Clean™ continuous environmental disinfecting operating room light fixtures to help reduce the risk of health care acquired infections.

In fall of 2016, the New Century Spine and Outpatient Surgical Institute opened their new 10,700 square foot multispecialty surgery center, providing surgical and procedural treatments for pain management, dental/oral, plastic, orthopedics, podiatry, neuro/spine, ENT, general surgery, and gynecology. The goal of the Center was not only to provide high-quality patient care in an outpatient setting, but also to provide patients, families and staff a safe environment as soon as they entered the facility. To help meet that goal, the Center installed the latest disinfecting technology throughout the building, including Indigo-Clean lights in their operating rooms.

“Our patients trust us to give them safe, quality care, and so it was important for us to build a facility using the most innovative and effective infection prevention technologies,” said Thomas Ragukonis, MD, Medical Director “We chose to invest in Indigo-Clean for our operating room lighting not only because of the proven high antimicrobic rates, but we appreciated the ease of use, and the ability to continuously disinfect our operating rooms without any downtime.  That translates into more procedures and more revenue for us.”

Indigo-Clean fixtures use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to generate visible white light that also contains a narrow spectrum of indigo colored light.  This indigo color uses a wavelength of 405 nanometers (nm) to automatically, safely and continuously disinfect the air, hard and soft surfaces. The 405nm light is absorbed by molecules within bacteria, producing a chemical reaction that kills the bacteria from the inside as if common household bleach has been released within the bacterial cells. When the OR is not being used, the lights can be switched to an Indigo-only mode, providing a higher degree of safe disinfection.

Indigo-Clean bolsters current disinfecting efforts to reduce harmful bacteria in the environment. Recent hospital research studies have proven significant antimicrobial kill rates of more than 70 percent, including proven efficacy in killing MRSA* and C-diff**.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on any given day, around 1 in every 25 U.S. hospital patients contracts an infection in a healthcare setting. A CDC survey estimates that 75,000 hospital patients with hospital-acquired infections died during their hospitalization in 2011, and nearly one fourth (157,500 patients) developed infections from surgeries. Increased prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is estimated to kill up to 99,000 Americans and infect another 1.7 million each year.

*Maclean M., S.J. MacGregor, J.G. Anderson, G.A. Woolsey, J.E. Coia, K. Hamilton, I. Taggart, S.B. Watson, B. Thakker & G. Gettinby (2010). Environmental Decontamination of a Hospital Isolation Room using High‐Intensity Narrow‐Spectrum Light. Journal  of  Hospital Infection, 76(3); 247‐251.    DOI: 10.1016/j.jhin.2010.07.010

**Antimicrobial Activity of a Continuous Visible Light Disinfection System by Rutala, et. al, ID Week 2016.