{"id":3516,"date":"2020-09-08T15:23:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T22:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/usc-caruso-research-team-develops-pioneering-procedure-mask\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T13:32:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T20:32:35","slug":"usc-caruso-research-team-develops-pioneering-procedure-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/usc-caruso-research-team-develops-pioneering-procedure-mask\/","title":{"rendered":"USC Caruso research team develops pioneering \u2018procedure\u2019 mask"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n\n \n Press Release<\/span>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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USC Caruso research team develops pioneering \u2018procedure\u2019 mask<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
\n \n September 08, 2020<\/span>\n <\/div>\n \n \n
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Infectious disease experts have long known the way to keep a deadly virus from spreading across hospital wards is to confine contagious patients to negative-pressure rooms.<\/p>\n

Now researchers at the USC\u00a0Caruso Department of Otolaryngology \u2013 Head and Neck Surgery are taking that idea to the next level, developing a\u00a0procedure\u00a0face mask that lets them safely scope their patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mask goes on the patient, not the doctor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Negative\u00a0air pressure\u00a0inside the mask\u00a0prevents\u00a0viral contamination of the clinic space,\u00a0and\u00a0built-in\u00a0sensors\u00a0and\u00a0air-flow\u00a0balance\u00a0control\u00a0allows\u00a0the use of supplementary oxygen, meaning\u00a0even very sick patients\u00a0can\u00a0undergo endoscopy.<\/p>\n

The idea grew out of necessity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed to reopen our clinic safely,\u201d says Elisabeth Ference,\u00a0\u00a0an assistant professor of clinical otolaryngology.\u00a0Early in the pandemic, reports from China showed ENTs and ophthalmologists among the most likely clinicians to contract COVID-19.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clinicians aren\u2019t the only ones at risk. A recent study showed\u00a0<\/strong>that nasal endoscopy\u2014and the sneezing associated with it\u2014generates particles in the 1-10 micrometer range.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cViral particles could infect the next patient in the room, or other workers, such as the cleaning crew,\u201d Ference says.<\/p>\n

To mitigate these hazards, the USC Caruso otolaryngology clinic\u00a0cut patient volume by two-thirds, and examining rooms are now \u201cterminally cleaned\u201d between patients\u2014a process that takes up to four hours.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ference turned to USC Caruso department chair John\u00a0Oghalai, proposing the initial concept of a negative-pressure mask. She knew of colleagues in other hospitals whose improved \u201chacks\u201d involved punching a hole in an N95 mask and inserting the scope through a seal made from rubber gloves.\u00a0Other ENTs\u00a0modified a bag valve mask, a type of manual resuscitator, by removing the top and inserting a filter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there was nothing tested or off-the-shelf,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Oghalai brought in Brian Applegate, a biomedical engineer who holds joint faculty appointments in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the\u00a0Otolaryngology\u00a0Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a fairly straightforward engineering problem,\u201d says Applegate, who had previously\u00a03-D printed reusable N95 masks for every USC Caruso clinician. \u201cNow we\u2019re trying to figure out how to get the mask to contain the aerosol, be comfortable,\u00a0and be easy to use. Also, how do we verify that it fits sufficiently well to protect people with different face shapes or with beards?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Applegate and staff scientist Wihan Kim are currently prototyping the\u00a0procedure\u00a0mask.<\/p>\n

Recently, the project received a $105,000 boost\u00a0from the W. M. Keck Found Foundation, part of a $4 million emergency fund\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0in April to speed COVID-19 research at USC. Under the nine-month grant, the USC Caruso team plans to finalize the prototype and also\u00a0to\u00a0quantify the risk of aerosolization of patient secretions during routine nasal endoscopy and laryngoscopy.<\/p>\n

Ference will lead clinical studies using the mask with 200 patients. A provisional patent (No. 63\/033,052) was filed, and negotiations for commercial manufacture are underway with support from the\u00a0USC Stevens Center for Innovation<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once the pandemic recedes, the researchers believe demand for the\u00a0procedure\u00a0mask will continue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think ENT is ever going back to the way it was before,\u201d Ference says. \u201cWe were way too cavalier about personal protective equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Otolaryngologists previously used only gloves during aerosol generating procedures. Increased awareness of viral contamination, Ference believes, will lead to more robust safety regimens going forward, preventing the spread of flu and other common respiratory diseases.<\/p>\n

But the\u00a0procedure\u00a0mask has potential applications well beyond scoping. It promises to ease the difficulty of moving infectious patients around hospitals.<\/p>\n

Currently, COVID-positive patients who are not intubated or on oxygen supplementation wear ordinary surgical masks if they must leave isolation for imaging or surgery.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing that we have that would seal them in, other than the actual structure of the COVID ward,\u201d Ference says. Negative-pressure wards have their own elevators, and certain ORs are designated for COVID-positive patients. But when a COVID-positive patient needs an MRI, that triggers an intense cleaning procedure which shuts down the machine for two hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s an MRI machine the rest of the hospital needs,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0procedure\u00a0mask will remove that stumbling block, among many others.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2013 By Diane Krieger<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":3518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[169,16],"class_list":["post-3516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-release","tag-latest","tag-otolaryngology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUSC Caruso research team develops pioneering \u2018procedure\u2019 mask<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/usc-caruso-research-team-develops-pioneering-procedure-mask\/\" \/>\n<meta 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