Factors Affecting Acoustics and Speech Intelligibility in the Operating Room: Size Matters

Anesthesia and Analgesia
Richard R McNeerRoman Dudaryk

Abstract

Noise in health care settings has increased since 1960 and represents a significant source of dissatisfaction among staff and patients and risk to patient safety. Operating rooms (ORs) in which effective communication is crucial are particularly noisy. Speech intelligibility is impacted by noise, room architecture, and acoustics. For example, sound reverberation time (RT60) increases with room size, which can negatively impact intelligibility, while room objects are hypothesized to have the opposite effect. We explored these relationships by investigating room construction and acoustics of the surgical suites at our institution. We studied our ORs during times of nonuse. Room dimensions were measured to calculate room volumes (VR). Room content was assessed by estimating size and assigning items into 5 volume categories to arrive at an adjusted room content volume (VC) metric. Psychoacoustic analyses were performed by playing sweep tones from a speaker and recording the impulse responses (ie, resulting sound fields) from 3 locations in each room. The recordings were used to calculate 6 psychoacoustic indices of intelligibility. Multiple linear regression was performed using VR and VC as predictor variables and each intelligibil...Continue Reading

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Citations

Aug 22, 2018·Veterinary Surgery : VS·Josephine DornbuschJames Colee
Apr 16, 2020·Canadian Journal of Anaesthesia = Journal Canadien D'anesthésie·Meghan Prin, Karsten Bartels
Nov 26, 2020·American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy·Marc LevinDoron D Sommer

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