Surgical masks offer our doctors no
protection in the face of a pandemic and
need to be replaced.
Image: iStockphoto
Surgical masks used to protect health workers offer no defense against influenza and respiratory disease, and could be putting doctors and nurses at risk, University of New South Wales researchers have found.
The study compared the efficiency of various masks, and revealed that specialised respirators (N95 masks) offer the best protection to health workers, and should replace surgical masks.
Professor Raina MacIntyre, the study leader, presented the groundbreaking findings at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Franscisco on 16 September 2009.
The findings could revolutionise current medical practice, which relies on surgical masks providing defense against influenza when vaccines aren't available.
The protection of health workers is crucial, as they are at the front line of an effective pandemic response, according to Professor MacIntyre.
The results suggest that, although they're more expensive, N95 masks should be the standard protective equipment offered to health workers.
This is the first study to compare the efficiency of various masks, and it revealed that surgical masks offer no protection at all to either influenza or respiratory disease.
N95 masks provided 75 per cent protection against proven influenza infection and 56 per cent protection against proven respiratory viral infections.
N95 masks are recommended to be "fit tested" which is a time consuming process. Interestingly, the study found that there is no benefit to fit testing, and it would be unnecessary.
"We showed that formal fit-testing did not improve the efficacy of N95 masks, which is an important benefit during a pandemic, given the time and logistic difficulty associated with fit-testing," said Professor MacIntyre in a media statement.
The random clinical trial was performed in 24 hospitals and involved 1936 hospital health care workers in Beijing, China.
The results will help to protect doctors and nurses in the future, and ensure they are healthy enough to treat others during a pandemic, according to Professor MacIntyre.
"It would be indefensible to offer surgical masks to health care workers as protection - N95 masks should be the standard protection offered to health workers, and do not need to be formally fit-tested," she said in a media statement.
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