Open AccessMicrobial Air Quality in Healthcare Facilities
Author(s) -
Lucia Bonadonna,
Rossella Briancesco,
Anna Maria Coccia,
Pierluigi Meloni,
Giuseppina La Rosa,
Umberto Moscato
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of environmental research and public health/international journal of environmental research and public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.747
H-Index - 113
eISSN - 1661-7827
pISSN - 1660-4601
DOI - 10.3390/ijerph18126226
Subject(s) - environmental health , health care , medicine , airborne transmission , transmission (telecommunications) , air quality index , medical emergency , intensive care medicine , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , ecology , covid-19 , biology , pathology , electrical engineering , economics , economic growth , engineering
There is increasing evidence that indoor air quality and contaminated surfaces provide an important potential source for transmission of pathogens in hospitals. Airborne hospital microorganisms are apparently harmless to healthy people. Nevertheless, healthcare settings are characterized by different environmental critical conditions and high infective risk, mainly due to the compromised immunologic conditions of the patients that make them more vulnerable to infections. Thus, spread, survival and persistence of microbial communities are important factors in hospital environments affecting health of inpatients as well as of medical and nursing staff. In this paper, airborne and aerosolized microorganisms and their presence in hospital environments are taken into consideration, and the factors that collectively contribute to defining the infection risk in these facilities are illustrated.