1. Protection level
EN 13795 classifies surgical gowns as medical instruments and classifies them into:
High performance surgical clothing: suitable for high risk of infection, large amount of spray surgery; Standard performance operating suit: Suitable for low risk of infection, small amount of spatter surgery;
2. Structure
The overall need for surgical clothing varies according to the risk of exposure. The chest and sleeves are in the "high risk" area, while the rest of the suit is in the "low risk" area. Therefore, different areas of the surgical garment are usually made of different fabrics.
Surgical gowns with different levels of protection are made of different materials. The higher the level of protection, the lower the permeability.
Because part of the medical staff in the operating room must wear surgical clothes during the whole operation process, the physiological load caused by hot air should be avoided as far as possible to ensure comfort. This process is affected by these factors:
Operating room temperature: controlled by operating room air conditioning system;
Workload: Depending on the amount of workload, the body will produce different amounts of heat. During surgery, medical staff are on their feet almost all the time, often for hours. During the operation, the surgeon cannot rely on anything and must remain in a slightly bent position for a long time. Only some procedures can be performed in a seated position, such as eye surgery or neurosurgery. However, each operation requires a great deal of concentration and can cause considerable mental stress;
Surgical clothing: its own product characteristics;
The wearer's personal physical condition: it depends on many factors, such as lack of sleep, poor nutrition, physical fitness, etc.
3. Clothing comfort
Physiological comfort of clothing is mainly divided into thermal and wet comfort, fitness comfort and contact comfort.
Body comfort refers to the fit of clothing and the ability to move freely. This can be easily assessed by trying on the clothes. Contact comfort refers to a kind of physiological feeling of human skin in addition to the effect of fabric or clothing. It comes from the human skin and fabric contact, fabric stimulation of the human skin layer under the nervous system, so that people feel the role of the stimulus, region and duration. It is important for scrubs to feel comfortable on the skin, especially in areas such as cuffs, necklines, etc. as they are in direct contact with the skin.
Thermal and humid comfort, also known as temperature comfort, refers to the interaction of external environmental conditions and their own activity conditions, clothing plays an appropriate auxiliary temperature regulation function, so that the human body can maintain thermal balance. Only when heat production and heat dissipation reach a balance will the body feel comfortable. When the body heat changes greatly, it is not enough to rely on the autonomous regulation function of the human body. Clothing is also needed to maintain the heat balance. As clothing is designed and cut, different results can be created that support or hinder heat transfer.
4. Conclusions and recommendations
When choosing surgical clothing, considering its performance, the product breathable comfort can not be ignored. Only when the surgical clothing is more comfortable, can surgeons and other medical staff in the operating room perform the operation better, improve the efficiency of the operation and reduce the risk of error.
Because operating clothes, operating sheets now belong to the second class of medical instruments, collectively referred to as "soft instruments" (wearable, foldable, water resistance, bacteria resistance, breathable, do not remove flocculation, anti-static, reusable, with two-way protection function of operating clothes, surgical cover sheet infection control class II medical instruments, does not include ordinary medical textiles).
Polyester fiber material is widely used in the market now, which is a synthetic fiber with less air permeability than cotton. Therefore, in order to ensure wearing comfort, requirements for operating clothing were put forward in YY/T 0506.8-2019 Operating Sheets, Operating Gowns and clean Clothes for Patients, medical staff and instruments Part 8: Special Requirements for Products:
High-performance surgical clothing is divided into critical and non-critical areas. The use of three-layer composite materials in key areas can provide better protection, but the permeability is relatively weak. In order to ensure the comfort of surgical clothing, non-critical areas are made of a single layer material with better air permeability (long fiber polyester).
On the other hand, the seams in the critical areas of the operating suit require high sealing in order to provide better protection, but also reduce air permeability, so the breathable comfort of the operating suit is more dependent on non-critical areas.
To sum up, the air permeability of surgical clothing is very important, and the non-critical areas that play the role of air permeability should not be ignored.
