Modification of Stryker T5^TM and Stryker Flyte® Personal Protection Surgical Helmets to Function as Powered Air-Purifying Respirators

Abstract

Since the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak, health-care workers (HCWs) have had to create personal protective equipment (PPE) due to the worldwide demand and thus ensuing shortage. To address the dearth of available PPE, HCWs have quickly explored options to repurpose in-hospital equipment to provide alternative PPE to caregivers. We report the modification of a Stryker T5TM and Stryker Flyte® personal protection surgical helmets as a powered air-purifying respirator.

An Emergency Powered Air-Purifying Respirator From Local Materials and its Efficacy Against Aerosolized Nanoparticles

“…2 Healthcare professionals in rural Virginia sought to alleviate such shortages by converting surgical helmets into emergency powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs). Similar efforts have been reported 3,4 but efficacy against sub-micron particles associated with airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 5 is largely unknown. We demonstrated an approach for converting surgical helmets into emergency-use PAPRs with readily available materials and verified its efficacy against nanoscale aerosols using an improvised PAPR evaluation method.…”

Surgical helmets can be converted into efficient disinfectable powered air-purifying respirators

“…During the pandemic, several modifications of surgical helmets have been suggested in the literature. [20][21][22][23] Nevertheless, many of these investigations utilize non-standardized testing procedures, making a direct comparison with the benchmark equipment difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, most papers lack a complete characterization of the equipment considering the safety issues and the specific threats from bio-aerosols such as the SARS-CoV-19 virus.…”