In the supermarket, it protects the cashier from potentially infectious droplets, and also in the hospital they would be attached to the plexiglass wall. In particular, the intensive contact of Doctors and nurses with infectious particles of any size and type can not be avoided, especially when it comes to interventions in the pharyngeal cavity of a patient.
Karin Truscheit
editor in the Department “Germany and the world”.
F. A. Z.
Countless of these tests will be carried out every day: a throat swab for strep throat, a gastroscopy by means of a hose or a SIP of ultrasound of the heart through the esophagus (Transesophageal echocardiography). Since infection with Sars-CoV-2 runs, often unnoticed, could be transferred in these interventions on the respiratory tract of each patient, the smallest of infected droplets, aerosols,. Particularly high is the risk in the treatment of Covid-19-patient: when Doctors put in an Intubation of a breathing tube or remove it. In addition, when a hose for a Mirroring of the respiratory tract (bronchoscopy) is introduced into the mouth or nose of the patient, or via a nasal tube oxygen at a high speed is given.
But the personal protective equipment for medical staff, which is used only once, in the course of the pandemic is difficult to, the existing Material needs to be used sparingly. In March, at the height of the crisis, sought, therefore, Florian Straube, senior physician at the clinic for cardiology and internal intensive care medicine in Munich, clinic Bogenhausen, a solution: “We desperately needed additional protection that increases the safety of the personnel and nevertheless, the treatment of patients, not limiting.” So, he designed, together with colleagues from the fields of anesthesiology, pulmonology and gastroenterology, a mobile protection wall. The requirements: mobile, transparent, recyclable and easy to sanitize.
thanks to the rolling, the walls are mobile
acrylic glass offered, the Doctors constructed a frame made of aluminum and is bolted to four roles, including how they are available in any hardware store. You put two boards as side walls and mounted on the transparent Plexiglas wall. In the Plexiglas was milled as a “pass through” two Openings for the arms of the doctor or nurse to the patient, the interventions make. In the search for a manufacturer Straube joined the Munich-based company, Wenzel GmbH, which produces photo prints behind plexiglass. The company, which had just logged on to short-time work, immediately began to build the shields and the set short-time working.
More than 80 of these shields was produced by the company, in the meantime, you are in the four houses of the Munich clinic in the use of, a Hospital network with approximately 3000 beds. In Munich, clinic Schwabing, the first Covid have been treated in the January-19-patients. Thanks to the rollers, the protective walls can be placed quickly anywhere: on the operating table, as well as to the bed of the patient. Thanks to the particular dimensions you can use the wall in a narrow space, for example, in the isolation boxes for Covid-19-patients in the ICU. The contact with the Patient is possible, only the faces of the Patient and the doctor or nurse are separated by the disc. The wall, which is intended primarily as a Supplement to protective clothing after each use clean and disinfect.
experiments with water vapor, to simulate the distribution of aerosols and larger droplets in the case of the application of the safeguard wall, have shown the protective effect, according to Straube. The physician emphasizes the importance of quantity of virus for the Transmission of Covid-19: “The less infectious aerosols someone is exposed to, the greater the risk will be reduced, to infect.”
