Forty (40) Iraqi patients with burns infections who
were admitted to the burns center of Al-Ramadi
Teaching Hospital from the period of January till April
2014 were included in the present study. Ethical
permission to conduct this study as well as all
information were taken from those patients and their
relatives. Sterile cotton swabs were used to obtain the
ideal clinical samples for cultivation on the media in
the medical laboratories. After appropriate incubation
conditions, the bacterial growth was identified by using
API 20 E system.
Later on, all bacteria under study were exposed to the
cold plasma by Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD)
device with a certain voltage (25 kv) and a gap distance
(2 mm) with different exposure times ranging from 30 -
150 seconds, the number of bacteria were counted after
each DBD treatment. The results showed that all
bacterial species under study undergo reduction in
their numbers due to increase of the killing rate after
DBD treatment; this is related to the direct effect of
non-thermal plasma to the target bacteria due to
generation of so many free radicals with bactericidal
effect.