title: Infection Risk From Conducted Electrical Weapon Probes: What Do We Know?
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering Department, University of Minnesota, Crystal Bay, MN.|Biomedical Engineering Department, California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, CA.
authors.forename: Mark W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Kroll
authors.affiliation: Piedmont Health System, Atlanta, GA.
authors.forename: Mollie B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Ritter
authors.affiliation: Ti Training and Force Strategies, LLC., Scottsdale, AZ.
authors.forename: Richard A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Guilbault
authors.affiliation: Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics, Inc., San Jose, CA.
authors.forename: Dorin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Panescu
mesh_terms: D057667:Conducted Energy Weapon Injuries; D006801:Humans; D007239:Infections; D012306:Risk; D013211:Staphylococcus aureus / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D054041:Weapons
keywords: 
  CEW
  ; 
  TASER
  ; Infection; conducted electrical weapon; electrical weapon; forensic science; probe