“It would appear that minimum contamination can best be achieved by not wearing a mask at all but operating in silence…. The finding that there was an appreciable fall in the wound infection rate when masks were not worn certainly warrants further investigation. This trial was designed only to see whether wound infection increased, as had been predicted, when masks were not worn. It did not. The conclusion is that the wearing of a mask has very little relevance to the wellbeing of patients undergoing routine general surgery and it is a standard practice that could be abandoned.”
Neil Orr masks surgery
Paul, I referenced a 2018 “Journal of Orthopaedic Translation” paper on surgical masks in my “Letter to the Oregon Health Authority” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-oregon-health-authority) you may find of interest:
“This study provides strong evidence for the identification that SMs [surgical masks] as source of bacterial contamination during operative procedures, which should be a cause for alarm and attention in the prevention of surgical site infection in clinical practice.”
In the PACU I used to work in, our orthopedic and GYN cases (“bones and vaginas” was how we remembered lol) were all being nasally swabbed with betadine preoperatively to reduce postoperative infections caused by the patient’s own nasopharyngeal bacteria! https://www.aorn.org/outpatient-surgery/articles/enews-briefs/may-5-2021
It would be interesting to see the study you referenced reproduced!