Air change rate vs airflow pathway: bioaerosol containment and removal in patient rooms

Ventilation Rates and Airflow Pathways in Patient Rooms: A Case Study of Bioaerosol Containment and Removal.

Most studies on the transmission of infectious airborne disease have focused on patient room air changes per hour (ACH) and how ACH provides pathogen dilution and removal. The logical but mostly unproven premise is that greater air change rates reduce the concentration of infectious particles and thus, the probability of airborne disease transmission. Recently, a growing body of research sugges...

Forced-air patient warming blankets disrupt unidirectional airflow.

We have recently shown that waste heat from forced-air warming blankets can increase the temperature and concentration of airborne particles over the surgical site. The mechanism for the increased concentration of particles and their site of origin remained unclear. We therefore attempted to visualise the airflow in theatre over a simulated total knee replacement using neutral-buoyancy helium b...

Do forced air patient-warming devices disrupt unidirectional downward airflow?

Patient warming significantly decreases the risk of surgical site infection. Recently there have been concerns that forced air warming may interfere with unidirectional airflow, potentially posing an increased risk of infection. Our null hypothesis was that forced air and radiant warming devices do not increase the temperature and the number of particles over the surgical site when compared wit...

Comparison of airflow and contaminant distributions in rooms with traditional displacement ventilation and under-floor air distribution systems

Traditional displacement ventilation (TDV) and under-floor air distribution (UFAD) systems have been used widely because they create better indoor air quality. Many previous studies have compared the TDV or UFAD systems with mixing ventilation systems. This study first compared experimentally the TDV with UFAD systems that use four different diffusers (perforated TDV diffusers, swirl diffusers,...

Anechoic vs. Semi Anechoic Rooms