Trial reportEye (London, England)2023
Comparison of breath-guards and face-masks on droplet spread in eye clinics.
Trial report in Eye (London, England), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Considerations of COVID-19 in Ophthalmology.Microorganisms · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionCOVID-19 has impacted ophthalmic care delivery, with many units closed and several ophthalmologists catching COVID-19. Understanding droplet spread in clinical and training settings is paramount in maintaining productivity, while keeping patients and practitioners safe.
objectivesWe aimed to assess the effectiveness of a breath-guard and a face mask in reducing droplet spread within an eye clinic.
methodsWe performed a randomised trial of droplet spread using a fluorescein-based cough model to assess the efficacy of a 'breath-guard' and 'face-mask' to prevent the spread of droplets. The 'cough' spray was collected on calibrated paper targets. The sheets were photographed under blue light, with an orange filter on the camera; the position and size of the spots was measured with software originally developed for astronomy. We performed 44 randomised coughs; 22 controls with no breath-guard or face-mask, 11 using breath-guard only and 11 with combined breath-guard and face-mask. We compared both the number of droplets detected and the area of drops on paper targets.
resultsThe average number of droplets in the controls was 19,430 (SE 2691), the breath-guard group 80 (SE 19) droplets (P < 0.001); in the combined In the group the count was 5 (SE 2), a significant drop from shield only (P = 0.008). The mean areas of each target covered by spots for each group were 5.7 ± 0.857% (95% CI), 0.004 ± 0.000104% (95% CI) and 0.001 ± 0.0000627% (95% CI) respectively.
conclusionThese results show that the breath-guard alone reduced the droplet count by 99.93%. Combining the breath-guard with a face-mask reduced the droplet count by over 99.98%. Breath-guards are widely used in clinics and this trial demonstrates that breath-guards with face-masks effectively block droplet spray.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.