The healthcare environment has always been impacted by various risks and hazards. Today, those risks are amplified with new unknowns, new protocols and daily changes. Going “back to normal” is no longer an option, and caregiver safety is prioritized with new scrutiny. Just as healthcare workers are committed to protecting others, we are committed to helping them by filtering the air they breathe.

Optimal air quality is non-negotiable

With recommendations from AORN¹, ACS² and SAGES³, hospitals across the country are focused on utilizing their filtration and smoke evacuation technologies to help minimize the spread of viral and bacterial particulates to caregivers and patients.

In environments and procedures thought to carry a higher risk of exposure to viral load, ULPA and HEPA filters can remove small airborne particles and assist in providing certain environmental protection levels for healthcare professionals. Coupled with PPE protocols, these filters help protect hospital teams.

Tested rigorously to meet or exceed IEST or EN standards, each of our solutions support filtering air across the perioperative continuum.⁴ These solutions are designed to address care practices, patient transfers, room and air turnover timing protocols, to help hospitals as they establish a new normal, with a higher bar set for caregiver and patient protection.

Our Neptune 3 Waste Management System comes with standard integration of ULPA and HEPA filtration, our SafeAir Compact smoke evacuation box and PneumoClear Insufflator utilize best-in-class ULPA filtration and our Prevalon Air Pump and Mistral-Air Forced Air Warming System come equipped with HEPA filtration.

The Neptune Waste Management system is used widely across hospitals in the U.S. It is a readily available solution to provide HEPA filtration of particles that enter the rover via its suction canisters, as well as ULPA filtration for aerosol and smoke filtration.

In procedures thought to carry a higher risk of exposure to viral load, ULPA and HEPA filters with systems such as Neptune can assist in providing certain environmental protection levels for healthcare professionals -- and, coupled with the rigorous use of PPE, may further safeguard their teams.
 

It is proven that surgical smoke can contain harmful bacteria, viruses and diseases.⁵ The SafeAir compact smoke evacuator is a quiet, small, yet powerful unit that has zero ramp-up time, ensuring near-instant smoke evacuation. The integrated ULPA filter provides viral and bacterial filtration, helping you protect your staff and patients from the harmful effects that surgical smoke may have.⁶
 

PneumoClear is Stryker’s smart insufflator designed to provide a stable surgical site while actively removing smoke for laparoscopic surgery. Harmful surgical smoke – which may contain live bacteria and viruses – is aerosolized by the thermal destruction of tissue by use of lasers or electrosurgical devices during surgery. Active smoke evacuation is beneficial in keeping the surgeon and OR staff safe.

The 50-liter insufflator has two lightweight, flexible tube set options equipped with smoke evacuation capability. These smoke evacuation tube sets are comprised of a series of filters: 1 absorbent layer, 1 ULPA filter, 1 PVDF filter and 2 charcoal layers. The ULPA filter in smoke evacuation tube sets is capable of filtering particles as small as 0.01 micron.⁷ Studies have suggested that the current best practice for mitigating an infection transmission during a laparoscopic procedure is to use a multi-layered approach, which includes proper ventilation, appropriate PPE and smoke evacuation devices with a suction and filtration system (among other things).⁸

Many facilities rely on air-assisted technology for patient repositioning, and airborne contaminants have become an increasing concern. Facilities are looking to comply with CDC recommendation for the use of HEPA filtration. The HEPA-equipped air pump helps reduce the risk of spreading airborne contaminants while promoting patient mobility with Prevalon AirTAP and MATS Mobile Air Transfer System.^9,10
 

Our Mistral-Air Forced Air Warming System is uniquely designed to serve as a solution that optimizes patient warming throughout the perioperative process. It features exclusives such as HEPA filter, diffusion technology, and reflective technology. In addition to warming patients, it can also help prevent infection – as the Mistral-Air HEPA filter is 99.99% effective in capturing what is considered to be the most difficult particle size, .3 microns surpassing the level of filtration required for protective clinical environments.^11,12

Stryker makes no claims regarding the reduction in infection risk when using our products and Stryker has not specifically tested the products' ability to filter COVID-19 particles. ULPA and HEPA filters are only effective in filtering the gas that is cycled through the system and gases or surgical smoke that are not evacuated by the system cannot be filtered. No product can wholly eliminate the risk of viral transmission from aerosolization of biomaterials in laparoscopy.

1 AORN Surgical Smoke Key Takeaways Guidelines
2. ACS COVID-19: Considerations for Optimum Surgeon Protection
3. SAGES AND EAES Recommendations regarding surgical response to COVID-19 crisis. SAGES.org. https://www.sages.org/recommendations-surgical-response-covid-19/Released 3/30/20. Accessed July 27, 2020.
4. Stryker data on file; S1756.070333, S1756.070771, S1756.070817, S1756.070840, S1756.071362, S1756.071444, S1756.071469, S1756.071450, S1988.150724
5. Ogg J, Mary "Dangers of Smoke in the Operating Room". Elite Healthcare: Aug 2016; 1-6
6. Stryker data on file; S1756.071362, S1756.071444, S1756.071469, S1756.071450, S1988.150724
7. Testing located in DHFD15109
8. R S Parsa, N J Dirig, I N Eck, W K Payne III. Surgical Smoke and the Orthopedic Implications. The Internet Journal of Orthopedic Surgery. 2015 Volume 24 Number 1.
9. DDOE Technical Standard, U.S. Department of Energy Washington, D.C. 20585, June 2015. Available at https://www.standards.doe.gov/standards-documents/3000/3020-astd-2015/@@images/file. Accessed March 14, 2019.
10. Data on file, Sage Products, LLC.
11. MA Test Results on file 1-2 and 2-2
12. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Guidance for Filtration and Air-Cleaning Systems to Protect Building Environments from Airborne Chemical, Biological, or Radiological Attacks. (2014, June 6). Retrieved January 19, 2015, from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2003-136/