On the Assessment of the Environmental Comfort in Operating Theatres

The operating theatre is a very complex environment shared, for a certain period, by a group of people having highly different needs: on one side, there is the surgical team that must carry out a demanding job that in some cases can be very stressful (e.g. orthopedics surgery or those lasting more than four hours) and on the other, there is the anesthetized patient often subject to liquid infusion. Up to today little consideration has been given to the different needs of the surgical team whose members show different reactions according to their positions with respect to the scialytic lamp and above all to the task had within the team. Also the clothing influences the surgical team comfort degree: in fact, in some surgery (orthopedics, neurosurgery etc.) surgeons and assistants must wear non transpiring paper overalls beneath plasticized overalls besides protective masks and caps; then, if X-rays are needed during surgery, the second surgeon and the assistants must also wear lead overalls and lead thyroid collars and gloves while the anesthetists and nurses will keep on wearing non transpiring paper overalls; therefore the clothing thermal resistance of the surgical staff involved in the same surgical operation should be very different. The purpose of the present work is to report the first data obtained during an experimental campaign carried out at the SS. Annunziata hospital in Cento (Ferrara, Italy) and presents the developed investigation methodology.