Colleagues of Daniel Sessler from the McGovern School of Medicine conducted clinical studies and concluded that the use of supplementary air sterilization systems in operating rooms does not lead to a reduction in the frequency of surgical wound infections.
As part of the ORACLE randomized crossover cluster trials, which were conducted in 68 operating rooms, either active supplementary air filtration and sterilization systems or simulated systems visually similar to them were used during four-week periods.
During the trials, over 110 thousand adult patients, both inpatients and outpatients without signs of prior wound infection, underwent surgery in these operating rooms. Furthermore, each surgical procedure lasted at least one hour.
The analysis included data from more than 107 thousand performed operations. The results of this study were officially published in the scientific journal Anesthesiology.