Doctors at Guy’s Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital (UK) found that the use of a filter breathing mask (FFP2 or FFP3) increased a patient’s risk of respiratory complications by 38%. The study was published in the journal Anesthesia.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced doctors to take various precautions during operations where the risk of infection is extremely high. One precaution is the wearing of masks with FFP filters, but their effectiveness and impact on the risk of complications during surgery are unclear.
The analysis used data from 5,905 surgical patients from 70 hospital settings, and results adjusted for patient’s body mass index (BMI), SARS-CoV-2 infection status, urgency of surgery, and degree of first-person intubation. The operating doctors wore an FFP mask during the surgery, and the patients wore it before the ventilation tube was inserted. The overall incidence of respiratory complications in patients was 10%.
The use of FFP2/3 increased a patient’s chances of experiencing ventilation problems by 68% and also increased the risk of a patient’s blood oxygen levels to drop dangerously by 2.4 times.
The authors note that previous studies have reported discomfort when wearing a respirator due to heat and impaired speech understanding in a person wearing a respirator. This may have affected the anesthetist’s work, but this theory needs to be tested.