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COVID-19 : Intubation Boxes May Do More Harm Than Good
Clear aerosol boxes designed to keep COVID-19 patients’ airborne droplets from infecting healthcare workers during intubation may actually increase providers’ exposure to the virus, a small study suggests.
Joanna P. Simpson, MbChB, an intensivist in the Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine at Eastern Health in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and colleagues, tested five models of barriers used for protection while intubating simulated “patients” with COVID-19 and compared the interventions with a control of having no protection. They published their findings online Thursday in Anaesthesia.
Coauthor Peter Chan, MBBS, also an intensivist at Eastern Health, told Medscape Medical News the virus essentially concentrates inside the box and because the box has holes on the sides to allow providers’ arms in, the gaps “act as nozzles, so when a patient coughs, it creates a sudden wave of air that pushes all these particles out the path of least resistance” and into the face of the intubator.