Airborne infection risk during open-air cardiopulmonary resuscitation

AimCardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure where interpersonal distance cannot be maintained. There are and will always be outbreaks of infection from airborne diseases. Our objective was to assess the potential risk of airborne virus transmission during CPR in open-air conditions.MethodsWe performed advanced high-fidelity three-dimensional modelling and simulations to predict airborne transmission during out-of-hospital hands-only CPR. The computational model considers complex fluid dynamics and heat transfer phenomena such as aerosol evaporation, breakup, coalescence, turbulence, and local interactions between the aerosol and the surrounding fluid. Furthermore, we incorporated the effects of the wind speed/direction, the air temperature and relative humidity on the transport of contaminated saliva particles emitted from a victim during a resuscitation process based on an Airborne Infection Risk (AIR) Index.ResultsThe results reveal low-risk conditions that include wind direction and high relative humidity and temperature. High-risk situations include wind directed to the rescuer, low humidity and temperature. Combinations of other conditions have an intermediate AIR Index and risk for the rescue team.ConclusionsThe fluid dynamics, simulation-based AIR Index provides a classification of the risk of contagion by victim’s aerosol in the case of hands-only CPR considering environmental factors such as wind speed and direction, relative humidity and temperature. Therefore, we recommend that rescuers perform a quick assessment of their airborne infectious risk before starting CPR in the open air and positioning themselves to avoid wind directed to their faces.

Hypersensitivity of teeth after orthodontic treatment in adolescence

Relevance. In adolescence, focal demineralization after orthodontic treatment is highly prevalent. This, in turn, leads to symptomatic hypersensitivity in the absence of other predisposing factors (recessions, exposure of cervical dentin, increased abrasion, etc.). Reviewed the mechanism for reducing hypersensitivity and remineralizing of calcium-sodium phosphosilicate, also the effectiveness of using a prophylactic toothpaste with this component in adolescents.Materials and methods. A single-center, non-comparative open study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the Sensodyne Restoration and Protection toothpaste at the Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics, USMU for 4 weeks. 22 adolescents aged 14-16 years with focal demineralization of enamel in the stain stage after completion of orthodontic treatment participated in the study.Results. The use of toothpaste with calcium-sodium phosphosilicate after a month of use leads to a decrease in the hygiene index by 23.38%, a decrease in hypersensitivity according to the results of the Schiff air index by 56.94% (p ≤ 0.05), and a tendency to an increase in the level of mineralization and a decrease in areas of white spot lesions.Conclusions. Toothpaste with calcium-sodium phosphosilicate has a cleansing effect and reduces sensitivity and can be recommended for adolescents with focal demineralization against the background of orthodontic treatment.

Novel index to comprehensively evaluate air cleanliness: the Clean aIr Index (CII)

Air quality on our planet has been changing in particular since the industrial revolution (1750s) because of anthropogenic emissions. It is becoming increasingly important to realize air cleanliness, since clean air is as valuable a resource as clean water. A global standard for quantifying the level of air cleanliness is swiftly required, and we defined a novel concept, namely the Clean aIr Index (CII). The CII is a simple index defined by the normalization of the amount of a set of individual air pollutants. A CII value of 1 indicates completely clean air (no air pollutants), and 0 indicates the presence of air pollutants that meet the numerical environmental criteria for the normalization. In this time, the air pollutants used in the CII were taken from the Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) set by the World Health Organization (WHO), namely O3, particulate matters, NO2, and SO2. We chose Japan as a study area to evaluate CII because of the following reasons: (i) accurate validation data, as the in situ observation sites of the Atmospheric Environmental Regional Observation System (AEROS) provide highly accurate values of air pollutant amounts, and (ii) fixed numerical criteria from the Japanese Environmental Quality Standards (JEQS) as directed by the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) of Japan. We quantified air cleanliness in terms of the CII for the all 1896 municipalities in Japan and used data from Seoul and Beijing to evaluate Japanese air cleanliness. The amount of each air pollutant was calculated using a model that combined the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) models for 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2017. The CII values calculated by the WRF–CMAQ model and the AEROS measurements showed good agreement. The mean of the correlation coefficient for the CII values of 498 municipalities where the AEROS measurements operated was 0.66±0.05, which was higher than that of the Air Quality Index (AQI) of 0.57±0.06. The CII values averaged for the study period were 0.67, 0.52, and 0.24 in Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing, respectively; thus, the air in Tokyo was 1.5 and 2.3 times cleaner, i.e., lower amounts of air pollutants, than the air in Seoul and Beijing, respectively. The average CII value for the all Japanese municipalities was 0.72 over the study period. The extremely clean air, CII ≈0.90, occurred in the southern remote islands of Tokyo and to the west of the Pacific coast, i.e., Kochi, Mie, and Wakayama prefectures during summer, with the transport of clean air from the ocean. We presented the top 100 clean air cities in Japan as one example of an application of CII in society. We confirmed that the CII enabled the quantitative evaluation of air cleanliness. The CII can be useful and valuable in various scenarios such as encouraging sightseeing and migration, investment and insurance business, and city planning. The CII is a simple and fair index that can be applied to all nations.

Air Pollution and Nasal Mucociliary Clearance Time among Urban and Rural Residents in Two Philippine Communities

ABSTRACT Objective: To measure the nasal mucociliary clearance (NMC) time among adults residing in two Philippine communities with different air quality indices using the saccharin and methylene blue test. Methods: Design: Cross-Sectional Study Setting: Diliman, Quezon City and Puerto Princesa, Palawan Participantss: Fifty (50) participants, 25 residing in an urban city with fair air quality index and 25 residing in a rural province with good air quality index. Results: The mean NMC time of the urban group was 22.15±12.68 mins and was significantly longer than the NMC time of the rural group which was 5.29±2.87mins; t(48) = 6.643, p<0.0001). Conclusion: Increased air pollution may be associated with significant prolongation of nasal mucociliary clearance time among urban residents with fair quality air index compared to rural residents with good quality air index. Keywords: nasal mucociliary clearance, naso mucociliary clearance time, air pollution, air quality index, saccharin test, methylene blue

Novel index to comprehensively evaluate air cleanness: the Clean aIr Index

Air quality on our planet has been changing in particular since the industrial revolution (1750s) because of anthropogenic emissions. It is becoming increasingly important to visualize air cleanness, since clean air deserves a valuable resource as clean water. We defined a novel concept, namely Clean aIr Index, CII, to quantify the level of air cleanness in terms of a global standard. The CII is a simple index defined by the normalization of the amount of individual air pollutants. A CII value of 1 indicates completely clean air (no air pollutants), and 0 indicates the presence of air pollutants up to numerical environmental criteria for the normalization. In this time, the air pollutants used in the CII were taken from the Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) set by the World Health Organization (WHO), namely O3, particulate matters, NO2 and SO2. We chose Japan as a study area to evaluate CII because of the following reasons: i) accurate validation data, as the in situ observation sites of the Atmospheric Environmental Regional Observation System (AEROS) provide highly accurate values of air pollutant amounts, ii) obvious numerical criteria, namely the Japanese Environmental Quality Standards given by the Ministry of the Environment (MOE). We quantified air cleanness in terms of the CII for the all 1896 municipalities in Japan, and used Seoul and Beijing to evaluate Japanese air cleanness. The amount of each air pollutant was calculated using a model that combined the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) models for 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2017. The CII values were validated by comparing the WRF-CMAQ model and AEROS measurements for selected six cities, and an average correlation coefficient of >0.61 was obtained. The CII value of Tokyo averaged for the study period was 0.75, which was 1.2 and 1.9 times higher than that of Seoul (0.64) and Beijing (0.39), respectively. The extremely clean air, CII > 0.93, occurred around west of the Pacific coast, i.e., Kochi, Mie and Wakayama Prefectures, and southern remote islands of Tokyo during summer with transport of clean air from the ocean. The average CII value for the all Japanese municipalities was 0.78 over the study period. We presented Top 100 clean air cities in Japan using the CII. We confirmed that the CII enabled the quantitative evaluation of air cleanness. The CII can be useful value, for example, for encouraging sightseeing and migration, as tasty air, insurance company business, and city planning. The CII is a simple and fair index that can be applied to all nations.