Lint and Particulates in the OR, Are they Really Such a Big Deal?

Early on, Wava became a Certified Nursing Assistant supporting the military at several US military facilities across the nation as a volunteer. This enabled her to experience a vast array of medical complications and a deep desire to make a difference. For several years, she worked at the Microbiology Development and Control Laboratory in Utah (precursor to Nelson Laboratories), testing devices for medical safety. Wava received her PhD at the University of California School of Medicine, Davis Campus, where she majored in Comparative Pathology, focusing on human and animal disease systems. She volunteered at a small medical facility focusing the patients with immune deficiency, AIDS. In 1985 universal precautions were introduced due to the increasing number of AIDS/HIV cases among hospital personnel.  Shortly thereafter, Dr. Truscott graduated, and joined Baxter Healthcare in southern California.  

While participating in glove quality assessments for Baxter, she was asked to work with FDA to determine the level of protection provided by medical gloves. At that time, there were no glove performance requirements. Test methods were established for all medical gloves by FDA and ASTM improving their protection level. There were also increasing staff and patient complaints of serious allergic reactions from what appeared to predominantly be related to gloves. Wava went to Malysia, where most medical gloves were produced, to collect samples from the Rubber trees and at each stage of glove production. While doing so, she received a call from FDA to expand the volume of samples collected, bringing some to their labs. There, she worked to separate the latex proteins (via gel electrophoresis) while FDA ran tests utilizing blood, they had collected from individuals having severe allergic reactions. It was confirmed that the proteins isolated from glove production samples matched the allergens in the blood samples.  

When the Baxter facility moved to Illinois, Dr Truscott stayed in Southern California with her two young sons and joined the young SafeSkin glove company as Vice President of regulatory affairs and clinical education. The company grew rapidly. Truscott started lecturing. While studying for the lectures, she noted several surgical doctors were reporting post-surgical complications associated with the crosslinked glove powder left in surgical patient’s bodies. Wava lectured on the complications encountered. Then, She, along with several researchers, petitioned the FDA to ban powder on surgical gloves. SafeSkin was sold to Kimberly-Clark in Gorgia in 2020, where Wava joined them. After 15 years of lectures and petitions, the FDA finally banned powder on all medical gloves in the United States. 

In 2015, Wava Founded Truscott MedSci Associates, LLC.  She has been working on regulatory affairs issues for several companies while developing and presenting medical courses focusing on infection prevention, biofilms, small colony variants, staff complication associated medical Radiation, and the often-ignored Lint and Particle complications too often introduced into patients during surgery.