Effects of Long-Duration Wearing of N95 Respirator and Surgical Facemask: A Pilot Study

Facemasks and respirators are important components of personal protective equipment for health care workers in hospitals and public civilians during severe hazy conditions or influenza pandemic. The efficacy of protection of facemasks and respirators is of importance as they filter fine airborne particles from reaching the respiratory system and prevent interindividual infection. The protective efficacy of facemasks and respirators has been extensively studied and compared [1], by a cluster randomized trial on 794 household members, reported that facemasks seemed to prevent household transmission of influenza virus. Loeb et al. [2] by a randomized trial on 446 nurses, reported that surgical facemask is not inferior in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza compared to N95 respirator, which was criticized to be with various study limitations [3-5]. On the contrary, another study with cluster randomized clinical trial found that the rate of infection with medical mask was two times of with N95 respirator [6]. While Atrie and Worster [7] commented that [2] findings were supportive, the debate on whether the surgical mask is non inferior in preventing influenza than N95 respirator or not is still ongoing. Nevertheless, the difference of protective efficacy between facemask and respirator Effects of Long-Duration Wearing of N95 Respirator and Surgical Facemask: A Pilot Study