Numerical study on effects of door-opening on airflow patterns and dynamic cross-contamination in an ISO class 5 operating room

Abstract

The contamination diffusion to the operating room when the door is open was simulated with a computational fluid dynamic(CFD) method, to give the extent of the contamination diffusion. The influence of the door-opening procedure was ignored since the door of the operating room is normally a sliding one. The flow field in the case of the 16 s course of opening the door was simulated. The simulated and the experimental results demonstrate that the extent of the contamination diffusion is around 1.5 m when there is no temperature difference between indoor and outdoor, and there is hardly any contamination diffusion when the temperature difference is 1 °C. It can be concluded that the positive pressure difference in the operating room lost its function in preventing the contamination when the door is open. That the temperature of corridor is lower than that of operating room contributes to contamination control. Keeping 1 °C temperature difference between corridor and operating room and increasing positive pressure and air flow are suggested. It is more secure to set up an anteroom if persons come in or out of the operation room at the course of surgery.

Keywords

contamination control / computational fluid dynamic method / operating room / door-opening / biological clean operating room

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