The tiny effects of respiratory masks on physiological, subjective, and behavioral measures under mental load in a randomized controlled trial

Spang, Robert P.; Pieper, Kerstin

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-99100-7

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…An additional potential impairment from wearing masks concerns cognitive performance, which is why a math and a spelling test was carried out to simulate office work. No negative impact of mask wearing on the cognitive performance was detectable in accordance with other studies 10 , 39 . Also, in a study on 133 children aged 11–14 years, the wearing of face masks (SM or FFP2) for 90 min had no significant influence on concentration and cognition 40 .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Influence of face masks on the subjective impairment at different physical workloads

Kampen

Marek

Sucker

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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To quantify the subjective and cognitive impairment caused by wearing face masks at work, 20 men and 20 women (median age 47 years, range 19–65) were tested under different ergometer workloads while wearing surgical mask, community mask, FFP2 respirator or no mask in a randomized and partially double-blinded design. Masks were worn also at the workplace for four hours. Subjective impairment was recorded by questionnaires. Cognitive performance was tested before and after the workplace examination. Subjective feeling of heat, humidity, and difficult breathing increased with rising physical exertion and wearing time for all three mask types, most notably for FFP2. Even when blinded, participants with FFP2 reported difficult breathing already at rest. During physical exertion, individuals with low tolerance to discomfort reported significantly stronger impairment (OR 1.14, 95% CI 1.02–1.27). Regarding light work, older subjects (OR 0.95, 95% CI 0.92–0.98) and women (OR 0.84, 95% CI 0.72–0.99) showed significantly lower and atopic subjects stronger impairment (OR 1.16, 95% CI 1.06–1.27). No significant influence of mask wearing was detected on cognitive performance. Wearing a mask had no effect on cognitive performance, but led to discomfort which increased with physical exertion and wearing time. Individuals who tolerate discomfort poorly felt more impaired by wearing a mask during physical exertion.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Influence of face masks on the subjective impairment at different physical workloads

Kampen

Marek

Sucker

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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“…It seems that the effect of face mask wearing is minimal and can be neglected for short-duration experiments. These results correspond with recent papers [37], [6], [38] that focused on making measurements of physiological functions without and with mask wearing. No significant difference was detected in these studies.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

The Effect of Face Masks on Physiological Data and the Classification of Rehabilitation Walking

Procházka

Charvátová

Vyšata

2022

IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng.

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Gait analysis and the assessment of rehabilitation exercises are important processes that occur during fitness level monitoring and the treatment of neurological disorders. This paper presents the possibility of using oximetric, heart rate (HR), accelerometric, and global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) to analyse signals recorded during uphill and downhill walking without and with a face mask to find its influence on physiological functions during selected walking patterns. The experimental dataset includes 86 signal segments acquired under different conditions. The proposed methodology is based on signal analysis in both the time and frequency domains. The results indicate that face mask use has a minimal effect on blood oxygen concentration and heart rate, with the average mean changes of these parameters being less than 2 %. The support vector machine, a Bayesian method, the k-nearest neighbour method, and a two-layer neural network showed very good separation abilities and successfully classified different walking patterns only in the case when the effect of face mask wearing was not included in the classification process. Our methodology suggests that artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are efficient methods for the assessment of motion patterns in different motion conditions and that face masks have a negligible effect for shortduration experiments.

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“…Its results show nearly no effect of the face cover on blood oxygen concentration, which is compensated for by the higher breathing rate. These results are concordant with those of other studies that confirm the minimal impact of face masks wearing during short time periods [10], [11], [37], [38]. Latest extensive studies investigated the effect of face masks [39] while working during the long time periods of 12-h shifts for the blood saturation and heart rate.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Blood Oxygen Concentration and Physiological Data Changes During Motion While Wearing Face Masks

et al. 2022

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The study of physiological changes recorded by wearable devices during physical exercises belongs to very important research topics in neurology for the detection of motion disorders or monitoring of the fitness level during sports activities. This paper contributes to this area with studies of the effect of face masks and respirators on blood oxygen concentration, breathing frequency, and the heart rate changes. Experimental data sets include 296 segments of their total length of 60 hours, recorded on a home exercise bike under different motion conditions. Wearable instruments with oximetric, heart rate, accelerometric, and thermal camera sensors were used to fill the own database of signals recorded with selected sampling frequencies. The proposed methodology includes fundamental signal and image processing methods for signal analysis and machine learning tools for labeling image components and detecting facial temperature changes. Results show the minimal effect of mask wearing on blood oxygen concentration but its substantial influence on the breathing frequency and the heart rate. The use of a respirator substantially increased the respiratory rate for the given set of experiments under the load. This indicates how wearable sensors, computational intelligence, and machine learning can be used for motion monitoring and data analysis of signals recorded in different conditions.

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The tiny effects of respiratory masks on physiological, subjective, and behavioral measures under mental load in a randomized controlled trial

Cited by 14 publications

References 61 publications

Influence of face masks on the subjective impairment at different physical workloads

Influence of face masks on the subjective impairment at different physical workloads

The Effect of Face Masks on Physiological Data and the Classification of Rehabilitation Walking

Blood Oxygen Concentration and Physiological Data Changes During Motion While Wearing Face Masks

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