Investigating the influences of ventilation on the fate of particles generated by patient and medical staff in operating room

This study thoroughly investigated, using validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques, the influences of ventilation on the fate of particles generated by patient and medical staff in an operating room (OR) under a variety of operating conditions. The research first investigated that the body positions of surgeons (i.e., standing upright and bent over) have a significant impact on the spread of indoor pollutants. This can be one of the primary reasons that the conventional unidirectional ventilation system in the OR may still not mitigate the risk of surgical site infections (SSI). The study then revealed the adverse impacts of different upper respiratory tract characteristics of the patient (i.e., normal respiration, or coughing and sneezing under local/regional anesthesia) to the medical staff, disclosing the importance of wearing a respiratory mask of such patients during the surgery. This study further explored the influences of smoke particles generated from the patient's wound to the medical staff when using an electric knife during the surgery under four different ventilation methods, including the conventional unidirectional ventilation and three localized ventilation approaches proposed by this research. The results indicate that localized ventilation can be an effective supplement to the central ventilation system to mitigate the potential cross-infection risks between patient and medical staff.