Comprehensive and Live Air Purification as a Key Environmental, Clinical, and Patient Safety Factor: A Prospective Evaluation

Abstract

Healthcare organizations strive to provide optimal patient experience by improving care quality and enhancing clinical outcomes, while containing associated costs. In the United States, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than 1.7 million people suffer from an infectious complication annually, representing between 5 and 10% of all hospital admissions and costs ranging between $35B and $88B. Most infectious surface fomites originate from air. Consequently, reducing airborne pathogens should be associated with reduced surface fomites. This study represents the first comprehensive evaluation of infectious and aerosolized pathogens and their speciation, location and concentration within a typical hospital setting. The study provides data regarding the relationship between airborne pathogens and air filtration methodologies in the context of the molecular and microbial epidemiology of illness and infections in the clinical setting. The results demonstrated that using a transformational air purification system provided comprehensive remediation of airborne pathogens and significantly reduced surface-oriented infectious fomites. Overall reduction of airborne and surface bacterial and fungal pathogens responsible for illness and infections will result in a reduction of associated illnesses and HAI rates and improved patient care metrics including stay duration and readmission rates. Improvements in these outcome metrics should correlate to risk mitigation and cost avoidance.

The 2019–2020 novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) pandemic: A joint american college of academic international medicine-world academic council of emergency medicine multidisciplinary COVID-19 working group consensus paper

“…The kill ability provided by this technology was intentional as the capture ability employed by standard hospital high-efficiency particulate arrestance (a.k.a., HEPA) filtration systems, the most common means of air filtration used in healthcare, cannot provide comprehensive remediation when pathogen sizes fall within the range of 0.1–0.3 μ. [ 586 ] The approximate size of SARS-CoV-2 is 0.125 μ. [ 587 ] Because the HEAFT comprehensively remediates the COVID-19 airborne virus, it may be useful in hospitals, nursing facilities, critical care infrastructure, and frontline modular containment/isolation areas, to protect patients, HCWs, and those in potential proximity to infected individuals (e.g., contractors, visitors/families, nonclinical personnel, and allied healthcare professionals).…”

The impact of comprehensive air purification on patient duration of stay, discharge outcomes, and health care economics: A retrospective cohort study

“…The background environmental metrics used by the research team to compare AHU-HEPA and AAPT were published previously and examined prospectively, with detailed methodologic descriptions outlined in a separate manuscript. 17 Of note, the earlier publication evaluated overall airborne bacterial and fungal loading and included microbial testing of 3 commonly touched patient surfaces and 2 commonly touched clinical surfaces, with additional swabbing of air supply diffusers and return vents for viable bacteria and fungi. 17 The current study was based on a subset of nonbariatric surgical patients with an inpatient admission to any of the 3 zones who had a case mix index (CMI) included in their electronic medical record at the time of discharge (N ¼ 1,002).…”

“…16 Previous experience with the advanced air purification technology (AAPT) demonstrated that comprehensive remediation of airborne pathogens resulted in a decrease in infectious fomites across a variety of patient-facing surfaces. 17 The AAPT used in this study is more efficient than most current methods of air filtration in the hospital setting. 18 Operationally, the AAPT replaces a section of the hospital's existing heating ventilation and air conditioning ductwork and utilizes ultraviolet, germicidal irradiation technology and a multireflective enclosure to provide continuous, real-time remediation of all airborne pathogens before the air entering areas of patient care.…”

“…Given that a substantial proportion of infectious surface pathogens originate from the air, the indirect effect would manifest as a decrease in downstream harmful sequelae of a decrease infectious airborne and surface pathogen loading. 17 We hypothesized that a comprehensive remediation of airborne pathogens beyond standard HEPA filtration would positively impact HLOS, post discharge destinations, and overall hospital charges (HC).…”

Infection control measures, in situ simulation, and failure modes and effect analysis to fine-tune change management during COVID-19

“…Thus, consideration of design, equipment, and ventilation is important. [ 10 12 ] Incorporating negative-pressure rooms/areas into health-care facility designs, whether natural or mechanical, serves to dilute droplet nuclei in the air. This seems to be the single-most important engineering control for the successful reduction of airborne infection transmission.…”