A Systems Approach to Assess Transport and Diffusion of Hazardous Airborne Particles in a Large Surgical Suite: Potential Impacts on Viral Airborne Transmission

Abstract

Airborne transmission of viruses, such as the coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), in hospital systems are under debate: it has been shown that transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus goes beyond droplet dynamics that is limited to 3-6 feet, but it is unclear if the airborne viral load is significant enough to ensure transmission of the disease. Surgical smoke can act as a carrier for tissue particles, viruses, and bacteria. To quantify airborne transmission from a physical point of view, we consider surgical smoke produced by thermal destruction of tissue during the use of electrosurgical instruments as a marker of airborne particle diffusion-transportation. Surgical smoke plumes are also known to be dangerous for human health, especially to surgical staff who receive long-term exposure over the years. There are limited quantified metrics reported on long-term effects of surgical smoke on staff's health. The purpose of this paper is to provide a mathematical framework and experimental protocol to assess the transport and diffusion of hazardous airborne particles in every large operating room suite. Measurements from a network of air quality sensors gathered during a clinical study provide validation for the main part of the model. Overall, the model estimates staff exposure to airborne contamination from surgical smoke and biological material. To address the clinical implication over a long period of time, the systems approach is built upon previous work on multi-scale modeling of surgical flow in a large operating room suite and takes into account human behavior factors.

Gastroenterology Procedures Generate Aerosols: an Air Quality Turnover Solution to Mitigate the Risk

“…We give context on the procedural activity to better explain the bottom graph that displays a real-time measurement of particle count with an off-the-shelf device Dylos DC 1700, Dylos Corp (Riverside, CA, USA) which we have already used extensively in our air quality study of surgical suites [12]. Following the work of Setti et al, we assume that airborne diffusion of infected droplets from person to person can occur at a distance greater than two meters [28].…”

“…However, we did extensive development on the algorithm to get a robust and accurate measure that holds an accuracy of timing of one minute. A Dylos air quality sensor attached to the wall of the procedural room at about 1.5 m above the floor: these procedural rooms are relatively small compared to surgery operating rooms. We found in our previous CFD calculation and measurement with multiple air sensors [12], that air mixing takes less than a minute to give a relatively uniform SPC in standard surgical operating room. Due to the smaller size of the GI procedural room and the efficient HVAC system present in them, particle count should have little time lag compared to the source of particles (the staff or the patient).…”

“…Respiratory protection devices are used to protect staff in healthcare facilities with various degrees of success [7, 21]. We proposed recently a system approach to study the multiple scales of hospital air quality in relation to human factor and described the method in [12].…”

On COVID-19-safety ranking of seats in intercontinental commercial aircrafts: A preliminary multiphysics computational perspective

“…One option is to permanently remove less suited seats, while the other is to seat passengers only on the better positioned seats. A few recent studies (Adwibowo 2020;Garbey et al 2020;Perella et al 2020;Vuorinen 2020;Li et al 2020) have tried to numerically model the indoor spread of COVID-19 viral particles using CFD. A couple of studies (Li et al 2016;Bhatia and De Santis 2020) have explicitly studied the transport of pollutants inside aircraft cabins.…”

On COVID-19-safety ranking of seats in intercontinental commercial aircrafts: A preliminary multiphysics computational perspective

“…One option is to permanently remove less suited seats, while the other is to seat passengers only on the better positioned seats. A few recent studies [14][15][16][17][18] have tried to numerically model the indoor spread of COVID-19 viral particles using CFD. A couple of studies [19,20] have explicitly studied the transport of pollutants inside aircraft cabins.…”