Is additive manufacturing a magic bullet to resupply lacking PPE? Producing respirators and face shields during COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review.
Polim Med
; 51(2): 91-102, 2021.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1575456
ABSTRACT
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused an increase in the demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) and disruptions in production chains, resulting in an acute shortage of PPE. A possible solution to this problem was additive manufacturing (AM) technology - allowing for a quick start of the production of PPE and potentially able to meet the demand until the production is restored. In addition, AM allows for the production of PPE prototypes with potentially greater comfort of use or degree of protection. In order to assess the production of PPE in AM during the COVID-19 pandemic, previously published articles in this field were analyzed. After analyzing abstracts and full texts, 30 original works were selected from the initially collected 487 articles. Based on the analyzed literature, it was found that there are not enough studies comparing traditional and AM PPE as well as not enough comparisons of the different types of AM PPE with each other. In many cases, researchers focused only on the subjective assessment of the comfort of using PPE, without assessing their effectiveness in preventing infections. Despite that, AM has a great potential to quickly produce lacking PPE. Respirators and shields made by AM were rated by the vast majority of users as comfortable to wear. Some of the respirators could be adapted to a specific user, by designing on the basis of a face scan or after warming up the finished print and modeling the shape.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Personal Protective Equipment
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Reviews
/
Systematic review/Meta Analysis
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Polim Med
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Pim
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