Effects of wearing a mask on oxygenation of subjects with spontaneous breathing during supplementary oxygen through facemask / 生物医学工程学杂志

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 epidemic, our national guidelines have suggested that surgical patients should wear a mask to decrease the potential transmission of COVID-19 in the operating room, as long as the condition allows. However, so far, there is no study to discuss the influence of wearing a mask on the ventilation and blood oxygenation status in patients of spontaneous breathing with supplementary oxygen through an anesthetic facemask. This is a before-after study in the same patient, and 10 healthy volunteers were recruited, by testing the arterial blood gas parameters at key time points before and after oxygen inhalation to evaluate the effects of two different supplementary oxygen methods ('disposable medical mask + anesthetic facemask' and 'anesthetic facemask only') on the oxygenation of subjects. Our data demonstrated whether wearing a disposable medical mask or not could effectively increase the oxygen supply of the subjects compared with the basic value before oxygen inhalation; however, compared with the group without mask, the arterial oxygen partial (PaO