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Assessing the Effectiveness of a Novel Negative-Pressure Particle Containment Device for Reducing Respiratory Particles during Intubation
MUCHUAN NIU, Liqiao Li, Haoxuan Chen, Peyton Tebon, John Shin, Tristan Grogan, Nir Hoftman, Yifang Zhu, University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract Number: 265
Working Group: Health-Related Aerosols
Abstract
Health care workers (HCW) involved in respiratory droplet and aerosol generating procedures are at high risk of infection when treating the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. The virus-laden respiratory particles can easily reach HCWs within a close proximity (~ 6 feet) through airborne transmission. Thus, the effectiveness of personal containment devices (PCD) applied to these high-risk procedures are critical to the safety of HCWs. However, current PCD designs usually lack a complete barrier between patient and HCW and the real-world particle removal efficiency is poorly understood. Here, we designed a suction-assisted local aerosol containment chamber (SLACC) and measured the particle number concentration (PNC) and size distribution simultaneously inside and outside of the SLACC at the head and side location of the surgical table, using saline nebulizer as the source of aerosol generation. We found that the SLACC device reduced > 97.7% of particles outside at either the head or the side location compared to inside SLACC. The aerosol source showed two size-modes at 0.6 μm and 2.4 μm, similar to the COVID-19 aerosol sizes measured in two Wuhan hospitals indoors; while no particle larger than 0.5 μm was observed outside of the SLACC. Our preliminary results showed that the SLACC device is highly effective in reducing PNC at outside locations, which could directly benefit the HCWs by reducing their exposures to airborne particles. In the future, we plan to recruit 100 patients and assess the real-world particle reducing abilities of the SLACC device during surgery. In addition to COVID-19, the SLACC device could be applied to any infectious diseases requiring isolation and airway management to protect HCWs.