Medical Fact of the Day – Respirators vs Surgical Masks
In medical school we learn all sorts of interesting facts, and I want to share them with you. I've started the Medical Fact of the Day to share some of the most interesting things I've learned. They won't necessarily come everyday (to avoid making this blog a lecture series) but they will be things I especially want to share.
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Today for Introduction to the Profession we were fitted for respirators, shown below:
This man kindly models proper wearing of the respirator.
These fit so snugly around the mouth that all the air breathed in is filtered through the mask. These respirators are meant to trap all particles in the air down to about 100 nanometers, or smaller than a bacterium and smaller than many viruses. For instance, we would wear them when seeing patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis to prevent being infected ourselves and passing it around the hospital.
I want to contrast these with surgical masks:
More fashionable than we see in the hospital.
You can see these worn around flu season. They were especially notable in Asia during the SARS epidemic and can be quite the fashion item.
These do NOT filter all the air you breathe. It is important to note that they do not protect all that well against inhalation of foreign particles. Instead, they prevent wearers from touching their noses and mouths, and they reduce the spread of droplets when the wearer coughs or sneezes.
For the general public, these can therefore help prevent transmission of disease, especially around flu season, but they are by no means failsafe.
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August 30th, 2009 - 06:29
The N95 masks are so uncomfortable. I was working in the infectious diseases wing during part of my pediatrics rotation and nearly every patient was on droplet precautions. I’m convinced that the irritation from the masks was the reason I developed a big pimple along the mask line during the rotation.