Improvement of the Indoor Environment and Airborne Contamination Control in an Operating Room

Abstract

Modern operating rooms are increasingly turning to contamination control by ventilating technology for the infectious control. The objective of this study is to present the strategic approach on performance improvement of the ventilating system for a hospital operating room under limit budget. A physical partition curtain has been proposed and conducted around the high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter of an operating room to validate the improvement of air distribution and contamination control. Numerical simulation of a full-scale operating room has been carried out at a district hospital. The results from computer simulation revealed that the improvement of airflow could be achieved satisfactorily by the application of a physical partition curtain at the length of 1.2 m. Ventilation performance could be assessed extensively not only by airflow distribution and concentration profile but also by the calculation of contamination concentration decay.