Body Substance Isolation - Place of Body Substance Isolation Practice in History

Place of Body Substance Isolation Practice in History

Practice of Universal precautions was introduced in 1985–88. In 1987, the practice of Universal precautions was adjusted by a set of rules known as body substance isolation. In 1996, both practices were replaced by the latest approach known as standard precautions (health care). Nowadays and in isolation, practice of body substance isolation has just historical significance.

Body substance isolation went further than universal precautions in isolating workers from pathogens, including substances now currently known to carry HIV. These pathogens fall into two broad categories, bloodborne (carried in the body fluids) and airborne. The practice of BSI was common in Pre-Hospital care and Emergency Medical Services due to the often unknown nature of the patient and his/her disease or medical conditions. It was a part of the National Standards Curriculum for Prehospital Providers and Firefighters.

Types of body substance isolation included:

  • Hospital gowns
  • Medical gloves
  • Shoe covers
  • Surgical mask or N95 Respirator
  • Safety Glasses

It was postulated that BSI precautions should be practiced in environment where treaters were exposed to bodily fluids, such as:

  • blood, semen, preseminal fluid, vaginal secretions, synovial fluid, amniotic fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, pleural fluid, peritoneal fluid, marrow, pericardial fluid, feces, nasal secretions, urine, vomitus, sputum, mucus, cervical mucus, phlegm, saliva, breastmilk, colostrum, and secretions and blood from the umbilical cord

Such infection control techniques that were recommended following the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s. Every patient was treated as if infected and therefore precautions were taken to minimize risk. Other conditions which called for minimizing risks with BSI:

  • Diseases with air-borne transmission (e.g., tuberculosis)
  • Diseases with droplet transmission (e.g., mumps, rubella, influenza, pertussis)
  • Transmission by direct or indirect contact with dried skin (e.g., colonisation with MRSA) or contaminated surfaces
  • Prion diseases (e.g., Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)

or any combination of the above.

Read more about this topic:  Body Substance Isolation

Famous quotes containing the words place of, place, body, substance, isolation, practice and/or history:

    There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
    In the place of their self-content;
    There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
    In a fellowless firmament;
    There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
    Where highways never ran—
    Sam Walter Foss (1858–1911)

    The wind and the rain, gives this place a gleam that just isn’t natural. And the ground, alive with crawling things, crawling death.
    Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1922–1978)

    To you illness is negligible. You have learned that you can dominate yourself. You know that your body lags, but your soul proceeds upon its triumphant way.
    Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)

    What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.
    Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)

    But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.
    Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)