Reusable Elastomeric Respirators in Health Care: Considerations for Routine and Surge Use by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health and Medicine: Medical Technologies and Treatments, Health and Medicine: Policy, Reviews and Evaluations
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2018-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Decision-Making Process

Prior to 1986, the facility did not have an infection prevention and control program other than annual tuberculin skin testing (TST). The testing showed that 40 to 50 percent of their staff had converted to TST positive after employment, and 1 to 2 percent of staff had TB disease. There were multiple reasons for this high seroconversion rate. Prior to 1995, only medical masks were used for employee protection. In response to the need to better protect its employees, TCID implemented its respiratory protection program in 1995 (Kizilbash et al., 2018). TCID’s respiratory protection program evaluated a number of respirator options and settled on a reusable elastomeric respirator (over the use of disposable filtering facepieces) with loose-fitting PAPRs as an alternative option for staff who cannot wear a tight-fitting respirator. Factors that influenced this selection included the perceived reliability, better protection, comfort, cost effectiveness, and ease of fit testing and user seal check experienced with the reusable elastomeric respirators (see Table 2-7). In a comparison of the initial purchase costs, the use of reusable elastomeric respirators was noted as cost effective (approximately $30 to $35 per device) compared to the estimated use of 20 N95 disposable filtering facepieces (approximately $17 for a box of 20) over the course of a single day of patient care. Following the TB test conversion of seven employees in 1992, the facility has not had a TST conversion since 1994.

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