Title:
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Effectiveness of isolation rooms in controlling airborne infection
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This research has arisen from the need to understand the air patterns within
isolation rooms and how they can affect the transmission of airborne
diseases to staff or visitors who are inside the room with an infectious
patient. Similarly, when it is the patient who needs protection from airborne
infection, the ventilation patterns inside the room need to be understood in
order to protect the patient. At times staff are very close to a patient and the
risk of infection during these activities needs to be quantified. This study
analyses the risk of infection in these cases, with different ventilation
regimes.
Differential pressures between an isolation room and adjacent spaces and
airtightness levels also aid in preventing the transmission of infectious
diseases, The existence of many different international guidelines with
regards to ventilation flow rates, air changes per hour and differential
pressures between rooms make the selection complicated for designers.
This study investigates the effect that pressure differentials and airtightness
have in infection control and how higher differential pressures, which are
more difficult to achieve and maintain, impact on the protection.
With the recent Ebola infection breakouts and fear of biological attacks, a
new model for an isolation room for this type of pathogens (category 4) has
been studied. The design intended to remove a patient's containment
Trexler tent, in order to provide better access and care to the patient.
Several changes to the original design have been studied in order to
improve the ventilation in the isolation room. The risk of infection to staff in
all variations of the design has been studied.
Finally, engineering methods quantify airborne infection using tracer gas
techniques, such as carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide, however little research
has been done to compare the gas tracer techniques with the behavior of
real bacteria
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