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Infection Risk From Conducted Electrical Weapon Probes: What Do We Know?
Author(s) -
Kroll Mark W.,
Ritter Mollie B.,
Guilbault Richard A.,
Panescu Dorin
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of forensic sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.715
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1556-4029
pISSN - 0022-1198
DOI - 10.1111/1556-4029.13148
Subject(s) - electroporation , infection rate , infection risk , staphylococcus aureus , contamination , medicine , biology , surgery , emergency medicine , bacteria , ecology , biochemistry , genetics , gene
Concern has been raised over the infection risk of the TASER electrical weapon since the probes penetrate the skin. The manufacturing process produces unsterilized probes with a 5% rate of Staphylococcus aureus contamination. Voluntary recipients ( n = 208) of probe exposures were surveyed and there were no self‐observations of infection. With over 3.3 million probe landings, there have been 10 case reports of penetrations of sensitive tissue with no reported infections. The electrical field was modeled and found that the electrical pulses generate a field of over 1200 V/mm on the dart portion. This is sufficient to sterilize the dart via electroporation. Electrical weapon probes appear to have a very low (possibly zero) rate of infection. The factors leading to this low infection rate appear to be a manufacturing process producing a low rate of bacterial contamination and the pulses sterilizing the dart via electroporation.