Each hospital should have an infection control team aiming to evaluate the risk factors involved in healthcare infection occurrences with a multidisciplinary and dynamic approach. Epidemiological infection control in hospital may detect all of the critical points of the healthcare procedures performed by nurses, healthcare workers, physicians, students, and external staff. This evaluation may also include the sanitization process and its management. An appropriate evaluation of the whole sanitization process, including the reprocessing of cleaning materials, would be the best practice.

Our study has some limitations. Firstly, the non-homogeneous sampling for all of the settings, where a greater number of analyses were dedicated to the OTs rather than the ICUs or patient rooms: it was not always possible to proceed with the UV-C treatment at the patient discharge because trained personnel were limited and not always available. This problem underlines the importance of having dedicated personnel identifiable as that of the outsourced cleaning company. The use of new technologies could in fact be included in outsourcing contracts as an improvement action in the event of non-compliance in the cleaning service. These personnel could be adequately trained not only on the cleaning protocols to be adopted but also on infection control issues.

In the OT and ICU, where the limit for hygiene quality is defined by national guidelines, respectively, % (/) and % (/) of the surface samples resulted in being non-compliant after SOP. In the ward rooms, according to the standard reported in the literature, % (/) of the sampled sites resulted in being non-compliant. All of the samples were compliant after UV-C disinfection. In all of the settings, % (/) of the sampled points received a medium UV-C dose of mJ/cm

Hospitalized patients&#x; security in intensive care units should be ensured using protective devices, which may be evaluated for human security during UV-C emission at specific dosages and times. Considering the lack of literature data about these possible strategies, the use of a UV-C robot in the presence of persons still represents a critical issue that may be taken into account for the development of safe and effective technologies.

Although the dose measurement system used in our study (FastCheck Mediland, Taoyuan City , Taiwan) is semi-quantitative, it allowed us to detect if the dose reached adequate values for disinfection and to repeat the application when the value was not satisfactory. However, each dose value exceeded the expected value. This demonstrates that the device was positioned correctly in order to avoid shadow areas, although it was necessary to properly place furniture and equipment to improve the irradiation of all surfaces. In the study conducted by Wong et al., the R-D Rapid Disinfector system (Steriliz, Rochester, NY, USA) was used in a tertiary care hospital to evaluate the incremental benefit of UV-C disinfection in isolation rooms after the discharge of infected patients. The employed robot used four detached sensors to directly measure the UV-C light [