New textile-based non-active medical devices for the Operating Room (O.R.)

Abstract

In the present-day society, expect much more from clothing that to satisfy our basic needs. Clothes are used as protective equipment’s and they are necessary to protect the user, in many different areas. The healthcare sector makes use of several protective equipment’s and most of them using textiles. Over the last years, a new range of materials and clothes for protect medical professionals and patients has emerged, improving the performance of each personal protective equipment. This paper is about new design of clean air suits (CAS) for use in the operating room (O.R.). These suits were developed to minimize the contamination in the O. R. It’s important to develop clothing with good protective barriers; however, attention must be given to comfort to obtain a CAS that answers effectively for both protection and comfort requirements. Our study consists in developing several designs, in order to foreseen the best design approach to a clean air suit regarding a balance between barrier and comfort. Therefore we also compared the thermal properties between the new designed clean air suits. The test was performed on a thermal manikin to measure clothing insulation and to evaluate the thermal comfort.