Experimental study on influence of personnel activity and surgical smoke on indoor environment inside clean operating room

Abstract

With the wide application of electronic surgical equipment, the generation of surgical smoke is inevitable. Surgical smoke will not only obstruct the operator's visibility, but also release toxic and harmful substances into the air, which will make the operator a headache and cause inflammation of the eyes and mucous membranes. In order to evaluate whether the existing operating room ventilation system can give priority to control the diffusion of surgical smoke, it is necessary to understand the generation, release, transmission and elimination performance of surgical smoke. This paper studied the rule of the influence of surgical smoke in different areas of the operating room through experiments, and verified by the three-area heterogeneous model. At a static state, the cleanliness level of the operating area and the surrounding area is ISO4 and ISO6. When there is staff activity, the operating room is in a dynamic state, and the operating area and the surrounding area are ISO7. When there is surgical smoke, the cleanliness level of the operating area is reduced to ISO8, and the surrounding area has little influence. This indicates that personnel activities and surgical smoke in the operating room have a great impact on the operating room environment.

Keywords:

• Surgical smoke
• clean operating room
• indoor air
• ventilation

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement is given to Nanjing TICA Climate Solutions Co. Ltd. for providing the operating room laboratory as the experimental site in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

China National Key R&D Program “Energy-saving design and key technical equipment development for clean air-conditioning plants” (No. 2018YFC0705201), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51508267), the Six Talent Peaks Project of Jiangsu Province (JNHB-043), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20130946), Natural Science Research Project of Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province (18KJB560009), the Scientific Research Foundation from Nanjing Tech University (No. 44214122).

Notes on contributors

Jianjie Cheng

Jianjie Cheng is an associate professor at Nanjing Tech University, China. She is the head for Department of HVAC at College of Urban Construction. Her research area covers the environmental control in building and energy efficient measures for sustainable development of green buildings.

Xiaoyi Niu

Xiaoyi Niu is a master candidate from Nanjing Tech University, China. She is interested in numerical simulation with two-phase flow field.

Rui Zhang

Rui Zhang is a master from Nanjing Tech University, China. She is interested in experiment with air cleanliness level in operating room.

Xidong Zhu

Xidong Zhu is a master candidate from Nanjing Tech University, China. He is interested in numerical simulation and experiment with flow field and heat pipe.

Song Lu

Song Lu is a master candidate from Nanjing Tech University, China. He is interested in clean air technology and pollution control for good indoor air quality.

Bin Zhou

Bin Zhou is an associate professor at Nanjing Tech University, China. He is currently the head of the laboratory for College of Urban Construction at NanjingTech. His research interests include air filtration, cleanroom technology, micro-contamination control and indoor air quality. He is a youth member for Journal of HV&AC, a member of Chinese Society of Particuology and Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences.

Xianting Li

Xianting Li is a professor in Department of Building Science at Tsinghua University, China. His interest is heating, ventilation and air conditioning, numerical analysis on air flow, refrigeration and thermal storage system.