3D Printing of Face Shields to Meet the Immediate Need for PPE in an Anesthesiology Department during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Armijo, Priscila R.; Markin, Nicholas W.; Nguyen, Scott; Ho, Dao H.; Horseman, Timothy S.; Lisco, Steven J.; Schiller, Alicia M.

Anesthesia providers are at risk for contracting COVID-19 due close patient contact. Proper personal protective equipment (PPE) use is critical to providing a safe environment and to minimize the risk of contagion. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, a series of supply chain issues, constant changes in PPE use policy, and higher demand for PPE led to shortages in PPE, specifically N95 masks and face shields. Implementation of decontamination protocols successfully allowed N95 mask reuse but, required masks to be unsoiled. Face shields not only act as a barrier against the soiling of N95 face masks, they also serve as more effective eye protection from respiratory droplets over standard eye shields. The University of Nebraska Medical Center produced face shields using a combination of 3D printing and assembly with commonly available products. Approximately 112 face shields were constructed and made available for use in 72 hours. Importantly, we created and implemented a simple but effective decontamination protocol, which allowed reuse of the face shields. These methods were successfully implemented for in-house production of face shields used at Tripler Army Medical Center (Tripler AMC, Hawaii). The effectiveness of the decontamination protocol was evaluated using the average log(10) reduction in colony counts for Escherichia coli ATCC 8937 and Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923 from the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC, Manassas, VA). In this manuscript, we present our detailed protocol and supplies needed for printing 3D face shields to enable the rapid production of this product by individuals with little to no 3D printing experience, in times of urgent need.