Latex Allergy - Those at Greatest Risk

Those At Greatest Risk

• Children with Spina bifida. About 68% will have a reaction.
• Industrial rubber workers, exposed for long periods to high amounts of latex. About 10% have an allergic reaction.
• Health care providers. Given the ubiquitous use of latex products in health care settings, management of latex allergy presents significant health organizational problems. Healthcare workers who frequently use latex gloves and other latex-containing medical supplies such as physicians, nurses, aides, dentists, dental hygienists, operating room employees, laboratory technicians, and hospital housekeeping personnel are at risk for developing latex allergy. Between about 4% to 17% of healthcare workers have a reaction, this usually presents as Irritant Contact Dermatitis, and can develop through allergic sensitivity to a status of full anaphylactic shock; with health workers losing their vocation. In the surgical setting, however, the risk of a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction by a patient has been deemed by Johns Hopkins Hospital to be sufficiently high to replace all latex surgical gloves with synthetic alternatives.
• People who have had multiple surgical procedures, especially in childhood.

Estimates of latex sensitivity in the general population range from 0.8% to 8.2%, although not all will ever develop a noticeable allergic reaction.

Synthetic latex compounds can be chemically identical to latex, producing the same allergic reactions. They also contain many of the same or similar accelerators. These synthetics do not have to be labeled as such.