Reducing patient to patient airborne exposure in patient and isolation rooms with two patients

¹ Halton Oy, Finland
² Built Environment Research Group, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Turku, Finland

^* Corresponding author: kim.hagstrom@halton.com

Abstract

Airborne transmission in hospital patient rooms may take place both in patient healthcare worker (HCW) interaction, but also between patients sharing the same room. A protective flow concept with dynamic airflow control, individual thermal environment and protective task airflow pattern has been developed and its efficiency in reducing HCW exposure risk as well as the thermal acceptance been verified in the previous stages of research for both patient and isolation rooms.

In the recent study the concept performance has been studied in a room with two patient beds both with individual protective flow arrangement. The research question was, whether the protective flow concept provided enhanced protection on patient to patient exposure compared to traditional mixing ventilation. The research was conducted for both normal patient room and isolation room situations.

The protective ventilation was able to keep the normalized concentration below 0.72 near exposed patient’s head in all four test conditions. It prevented the tracer gas to spread evenly to the patient room. The best protection, concentration clearly below 0.5 for the exposed patient was reached with the elevated airflow rate and having the curtain between patient beds.