Fig 1.
A health care professional using the personalized peripheral sealing device, designed at the ADEMA University School—UIB, with a surgical mask.
Fig 2.
A. Representative image of the lateral view of the thermoplastic resin ring; B. Frontal view; and C. Representative image of the surgical mask sealed with the personalized peripheral sealing device, where 1: Thermoplastic resin ring; 2: Area of peripheral sealed; 3: Thermoplastic resin ring traction hook; 4: Elastic; 5: Surgical mask.
Fig 3.
An individual of the intervention group being submitted to the qualitative fit test with the hood and nebulizer of the 3M FT-10 fit test.
Fig 4.
Representative image of the individual inside the cabin for the quantitative fit test obtained in the normativeEN 149:2001+A1:2009 [22], where 1. Atomizer; 2. Bomb; 3. Valve; 4. Filter; 5. Enclosure; 6. Sample extraction from enclosure; 7. Mask sample extraction; 8. Pressure gauge; 9. Photometer; 10. Surgical mask with the sealing device; 11. Continuous tape; 12. Duct and diffuser; 13. Additional air; 14. Intermittent interface for sample extraction; 15. Exhalation.
Fig 5.
Distribution of the test result in the control and intervention groups.
The PASSED percentage refers to the individuals that optimally passed the test (7 minutes without feeling the sweet taste). The FAILED percentage refers to the individuals that felt the sweet taste at some point of the experiment.
Table 1.
Number and percentage of individuals (intervention and control groups) that optimally passed the qualitative fit test.
Fig 6.
A. Distribution of the individuals of the study by age in the Control and Intervention groups; B. Distribution of the number of activations in the sensitivity test in the Control and Intervention groups.
Table 2.
Comparison of proportions by gender.
Fig 7.
A. Arithmetic means of individual wearers for total inward leakage, between 4.98% and 7.82%, values lower than those established by the FFP2 filter masks (<8.00%) and higher than those of the FFP3 (<2%); B. Individual exercise results for total inward leakage (i.e. 10 subjects x 5exercises), expressed as a percentage of total air inhaled, between 3.63% and 9.07%, values between those established for filter masks FFP2 (<11%) and higher than those for FFP3 (<5%).
Table 3.
Percentage of the total inward leakage in each one of the 5 individuals in the 5 different exercises.
Table 4.
Mean percentage of ambient air leakage into the masks in the 5 subjects that participated in the quantitative test.