Airborne Pathogens: Elusive and Dangerous

3. What materials should every healthcare facility have on hand to prevent airborne pathogen transmission?

Rowe: Signage, educating visitors, patients, contractors, vendors, and healthcare workers. Respirators, negative pressure isolation rooms, plans to handle surges including stockpiles of PPE (personal protective equipment), emergency surge capacity shelters and educational materials.

Wang: Respirator and surgical masks are most commonly used to prevent airborne pathogen transmission. However, more and more attention is being directed toward the use of PAPRs.

Why? The principle purpose of a surgical mask is to protect the surgical field and others (patients) from the spread of droplets from the users. Additionally, surgical masks may be used for user protection from splash during surgery.

A larger concern about surgical mask protection for a HCW is that they are typically not designed to make a seal against the face of the wearer. Without a good seal, their protection against viral and bacterial contaminants is poor.

Even N95 respirators are receiving greater scrutiny relative to their ability to provide cost effective bacterial and viral protection due to their low-filter efficiency and need for fit testing verification for each individual, for each brand and style of respirator, annually.

Fit testing is accomplished by qualitative as well as quantitative protocols. Qualitative fit testing is perhaps the easiest and fastest means of fit testing. The results are along the lines of “you get what you pay for” as results are variable.

Quantitative fit testing requires more technical skill and $10,000-$20,000 of test equipment.