Abstract
Purpose: In this study, we performed ventilation simulations for a standard isolation ward including three intensive care rooms, one anteroom(buffer room), and its recommended ventilation equipments. The purpose of this study is to predict outflow of pathogenic bacteria from patient breath to verify the reliability and the safety of the isolation ward. Methods: We suppose three scenarios of the movement of medical staff. The leakage of patient's breath to out of the ward is predicted in these scenarios using CFD simulations. Results: The patient's breath leakage rate to out of the ward in scenario 1 according to room air changes per hour(ACH : 6 and 12) is predicted to be 0.000057% and 0.00002%, respectively. The patient's breath leakage rate to out of the ward in scenario 2 according to room air changes(ACH : 6 and 12) is predicted to be 0.00063% and 0.00019%, respectively. The patient's breath leakage rate to out of the ward in scenario 3, which is the worst case(6 room air changes) is predicted to be 0.1%. Implications: Through the ventilation simulation like that in this study, the reliability and the safety on isolation performance of various plan of isolation ward are predicted quantitatively.