The importance of using Pall Medical Ultipor™ 100 filter on COVID-19 patients
A clinical study led by Prof. Adriano Peris at the Careggi University Hospital in Florence, Italy, investigated the viral load in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid taken from the lungs of their mechanically ventilated COVID-19 patients and if the use of the Ultipor™ 100 (Reorder code BB100E) and BB50TE Breathing System Filters positioned at the patient and machine end of the circuit respectively, prevented the spread of the virus exhaled by patients during mechanical ventilation.
The result of this study has been published online in September 2022 as a letter to the editor of the British Journal of Anaesthesia:
SARS-CoV-2 viral load in heat and humidity exchange filters during invasive mechanical ventilation of patients with COVID-19 - British Journal of Anaesthesia (bjanaesthesia.org). Printed version in press.
The patients in the study group were shown to be infected with a variety of SARS-CoV-2 lineages: wild type, alpha, gamma, delta, and omicron. The study showed impressively that the virus was exhaled by the patients and was found on the patient side of the Ultipor™ 100. At concentrations of more than 10,000 viruses per milliliter of lavage fluid from the patients’ lungs, up to 10 million virus copies were isolated from the patient side of the Ultipor™ 100 filter medium.
The good news for the clinical staff
Irrespective of viral strain and viral load, none of the Ultipor 100 filters which had retained SARS-Cov-2 on the patient side showed viral contamination on the “clean”, machine side of the filter medium, i.e., the filter kept the breathing circuit free of patient-derived viral contamination and prevented its spread into the ventilator. This is also a potential risk for ambient contamination in semi-open breathing systems in which the patient exhalation gases are released to the room air. All BB50TE filters used at the ventilator side of the circuit were therefore found to be free of any SARS-CoV-2 contamination.
The hydrophobic Ultipor™ 100 is an efficient heat and moisture exchanger filter, which in this study not only provided humidification for the lungs of the vulnerable COVID-19 patients, but it also acted as a reliable barrier against patient-derived SARS-CoV-2 contamination.
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Author bio
Wolfgang Hares, MSc, PhD — Sr. Global Manager Scientific Affairs for Gas Filtration and Respiratory Care
He supports with a range of products, which includes filters for mechanical ventilation, surgical and medical gas applications, and pulmonary function testing. He has held several roles in regional and Global marketing functions and holds a MsSc from the University of Cologne and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University Hamburg, Germany.