Health Care Workers and Respiratory Protection: Is the User Seal Check a Surrogate for Respirator Fit-Testing?
Many agencies recommend that health care workers wear N95 filtering facepiece respirators (N95-FFR) to minimize occupational exposure to bioaerosols, such as tuberculosis and pandemic influenza. Published standards outline procedures for the proper selection of an N95-FFR model, including user seal...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Occupational & Environmental Hygiene Vol. 8; no. 5; pp. 267 - 271 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis Ltd
May2011
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=104564992&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 104564992 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 15459624 V1L jtl: Journal of Occupational & Environmental Hygiene issn: 15459624 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: May2011 vid: 8 iid: 5 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania artinfo: ui: 104564992 75127932 10.1080/15459624.2011.566016 NLM21462067 104564992 ppf: 267 ppct: 4 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P tig: atl: Health Care Workers and Respiratory Protection: Is the User Seal Check a Surrogate for Respirator Fit-Testing? aug: au: Danyluk, Quinn Hon, Chun-Yip Neudorf, Mike Yassi, Annalee Bryce, Elizabeth Janssen, Bob Astrakianakis, George affil: Workplace Health, Fraser Health, Burnaby, BC, Canada sug: subj: Respiratory Protective Devices Evaluation Occupational Exposure Prevention and Control Sample Size Evaluation Research Descriptive Statistics Health Personnel American National Standards Institute ab: Many agencies recommend that health care workers wear N95 filtering facepiece respirators (N95-FFR) to minimize occupational exposure to bioaerosols, such as tuberculosis and pandemic influenza. Published standards outline procedures for the proper selection of an N95-FFR model, including user seal checks and respirator fit-testing. Some health officials have argued that the respirator fit-test step should be eliminated altogether, given its additional time and cost factors, and that only a user seal check be utilized to ensure that an adequate face seal has been achieved. One of the aims of the current study is to examine whether a user seal check is an appropriate surrogate for respirator fit-testing. Subjects were assigned an N95-FFR and asked to perform a user seal check (as per manufacturer's instructions) after which they immediately underwent a respirator fit-test. Successfully passing a respirator fit-test was based on not detecting a leakage through the face seal (either qualitatively with a test agent or quantitatively with a particulate counter). The sample population consisted of 647 subjects who had never been previously fit-tested (naive), while the remaining 137 participants were experienced respirator users. Only four of the 647 naive subjects (0.62%) identified an inadequate seal during their user seal check. Of the 643 remaining naive subjects who indicated that they had an adequate face seal prior to fit-testing, 158 (25%) failed the subsequent quantitative fit-test and 92 (14%) failed the qualitative fit-test. All 137 experienced users indicated that they had an adequate seal after performing the user seal check; however, 41 (30%) failed the subsequent quantitative fit-test, and 30 (22%) failed the qualitative fit-test. These findings contradict the argument to eliminate fit-testing and rely strictly on a user seal check to evaluate face seal. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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