Fist Bump Replaces Handshake At West LA Hospital To Fight Flu

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The fist bump: it's not just for athletes anymore.

Staff, physicians and patients at one West Los Angeles hospital are replacing handshakes with fist bumps in an effort to fend off the flu, officials announced this week.

The campaign at Kaiser Permanente's West Los Angeles Medical Center comes on the heels of a recent study that found using fist bumps alone can reduce the spread of infectious pathogens by up to 80 percent, according to the hospital.

Researchers at Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom found that the handshake transmitted the most potentially disease-causing bacteria compared to other greetings, such as the "high five," and the fist bump, which had the lowest germ transfer rate of them all.

The study also revealed that a handshake transfers about 10 times more germs from one person to another than a quick fist bump.

"A handshake involves more skin to skin contact time than a fist bump and therefore provides a greater opportunity for viruses and bacteria to spread," says Kalvin Yu, M.D., regional chief of infectious diseases at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles.

In response to the study, many Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles staff and physicians have already started to bump fists instead of shake hands, according to Yu.

Although the fist bump is a more informal and whimsical greeting, Yu said "there may be a biological basis and health benefit for using the fist bump over the handshake, especially this time of year when the flu and other infectious viruses abound."

Yu said the campaign does not seek to eliminate the handshake altogether, but to bring awareness of how easily germs spread and the importance of getting the flu vaccination.

"The handshake is a cultural norm, and some will always prefer to use this greeting," said Yu.

Long popular among professional athletes, the fist bump went mainstream following then-Senator Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and was later added as a new entry to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 2011.