About

Tracheal intubation has been singled out as a COVID-19 transmission risk procedure. The reason for this being it classifies as an aerosol generating procedure (AGP). Public health entities recommend that the highest precautions be taken while performing AGPs, such as having the healthcare workers wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to block the transmission routes of the accute respiratory virus. Recently imagined “aerosol boxes” act as extra PPE - along side gowns, gloves, masks, facial protection - blocking the virus transmission at the source. They are meant to be placed over the COVID infected patient’s head, where the virus might me expelled as droplets or droplet nuclei.

Aerosol box were used in Taiwan early during the COVID19 pandemy to protect medical experts from aerosols that are usually spilled in the room during the intubation and extubation phases.

The “aerosol box” appears to have originated in Taiwan, where Dr. Hsien Yung Lai (Mennonite Christian Hospital) designed a cheap acrylic box (see gallery photos) that can be used to mainly shield the healthcare workers working above the box. The box can be cleaned using 70% alcohol after usage and re-used for another patient. Although an improvement, this simple design still allowed quite a significant amount of aerosols during tracheal intubation. Since then, several versions of the “aerosol box” proposed various modifications to the initial design such as the addition of arm-holes to add ports, gloves to minimize the spread through the larger arm-holes or plastic sheets to minimize aerosol spillage along the patient’s thorax.

Our team believes that an even better containment can be achieved, experimentally validated and improved until an extremely low contamination level is reached. We also believe that a more ergonomic shape can be attained, so the doctors aren’t importuned by the box while intubating. This project is being done in collaboration with a local manufacturer that is equipped to quickly prototype such equipment and massively produce it. Finally, our team wants this work to be part of the onoing Global Effort against COVID19, and we will thus be freely publishing the output of this work (see the Summary table at the beginning of this post or the sidebar for more information).