Surgeon's caps that expose small amounts of the ears and hair are not inferior to the bouffant-style, disposable scrub hats that cover those features, one of the first studies testing the effectiveness of different operating room (OR) head coverings in preventing airborne contamination has found. For their study, the researchers tested three common styles of commercially available surgical headgear. Disposable shower cap-like bouffant hats underwent testing, as did two types of surgical skullcaps, another name for the tie-in-the-back, close-fitting caps that are popular with surgeons: disposable caps with paper sides, and freshly home-laundered, reusable, cloth skullcaps.
Unlike most tests for environmental quality, which said are typically done in a static laboratory, their airborne contamination testing was performed in an actual OR under changing conditions. For each style…
