Nursing

Rising tuberculosis (TB) rates have made operations on infected patients more common. The safety of OR personnel from TB infection depends on reliable high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration. A study in the May 2008 issue of the American Journal of Infection Control compares traditional freestanding HEPA units with portable anteroom system–HEPA (PAS-HEPA) combinations. These can be attached to an OR's main entrance to remove harmful airborne path-ogens. A smoke plume and noninfectious particles were used to simulate TB.

With the traditional HEPA system, both media tended to rise straight up, where they could endanger OR staff. The PAS-HEPA unit pulled the smoke down and away from the operating table and re-moved 94% of the simulated TB.

Although additional data are necessary to ensure that real TB would be captured as easily as the surrogates used in the study, these results do reinforce the guidelines offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for halting nosocomial TB transmission.