TY  - JOUR
A1  - Weiß, Roxanne
A1  - Guchlerner, Leon
A1  - Weißgerber, Tobias
A1  - Filmann, Natalie
A1  - Haake, Birgit
A1  - Zacharowski, Kai
A1  - Wolf, Timo
A1  - Wicker, Sabine
A1  - Kempf, Volkhard A. J.
A1  - Ciesek, Sandra
A1  - Stöver, Timo
A1  - Diensthuber, Marc
T1  - Powered air-purifying respirators used during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic significantly reduce speech perception
T2  - Journal of occupational medicine and toxicology
N2  - Background: Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, interventions in the upper airways are considered high-risk procedures for otolaryngologists and their colleagues. The purpose of this study was to evaluate limitations in hearing and communication when using a powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) system to protect against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission and to assess the benefit of a headset. Methods: Acoustic properties of the PAPR system were measured using a head and torso simulator. Audiological tests (tone audiometry, Freiburg speech test, Oldenburg sentence test (OLSA)) were performed in normal-hearing subjects (n = 10) to assess hearing with PAPR. The audiological test setup also included simulation of conditions in which the target speaker used either a PAPR, a filtering face piece (FFP) 3 respirator, or a surgical face mask. Results: Audiological measurements revealed that sound insulation by the PAPR headtop and noise, generated by the blower-assisted respiratory protection system, resulted in significantly deteriorated hearing thresholds (4.0 ± 7.2 dB hearing level (HL) vs. 49.2 ± 11.0 
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - SARS-CoV-2
KW  - Personal protective equipment
KW  - Powered air-purifying respirator
KW  - PAPR
KW  - FFP3 respirator
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/63470
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-634701
SN  - 1745-6673
N1  - The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
N1  - Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
VL  - 16
IS  - 43
SP  - 1
EP  - 11
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -