Improvising the surgical helmet system for aerosol-generating procedures in the OR: Surgeon designed 3D printed mould for augmented filtration system

1. BACKGROUND: The aim of this paper is to describe the process of designing and developing a mould for filter placement via 3D printing on top of the surgical helmet. This mould was designed to affix a filter material on top of the helmet system for use during the COVID - 19 pandemic. 2. METHOD: The authors performed 3D scanning of the Stryker Surgical helmet (Stryker T5, REF 400–610, US patents 6,973,677:7,753,682) and created a negative template of the top of the helmet. A mould for filter placement was printed and fitted onto the top of the surgical helmet. This construct was tested to evaluate the surgeon’s comfort, aerosol filtration efficiency etc. 3. RESULT: The helmet provided adequate comfort, showed no evidence of staining on spill test and the filter passed the industry filtration efficiency standards. 4. CONCLUSION: The 3D printed mould is an inexpensive, efficient, and comfortable design to augment personal protection ability of the Stryker helmet system. This process can be extrapolated to 3D print templates for other surgical helmets.