VENTILATION SYSTEMS
Ultraclean system for Swedish flagship hospital
Paweł Borowiceki, Sales director for Central Europe at global indoor air solutions technology specialist, Halton, explains how the company supplied an ultraclean ventilation system based on controlled dilution principles for 35 operating theatres in the new hospital buildings at the Karolinska University Hospital in Solna in Sweden. He describes the challenges of designing the system when, at the time, the range of surgeries to be performed was unknown.
The Karolinska University Hospital is one of Europe’s premier health facilities, and is coupled with the Karolinska Institute, which has an international reputation for pioneering medical discoveries. Two buildings, with state-of-the-art equipment, enable patients to receive medical care to the highest international standards. The main aim behind the new project was to offer high quality care in a safe, attractive, and sustainable environment.
Karolinska is also a major teaching hospital that educates and trains tomorrow’s medical specialists and healthcare professionals. As such, the building must be up-to-date and capable of adapting to meet the changing demands of the latest medical procedures. The hospital must be easily renovated to meet future operational and clinical needs.
The new hospital building in Solna is a state-of-the-art facility, and one of the most environmentally friendly university hospitals in the world. Karolinska admitted its first patients in 2016, and now the building is in full operation. The most seriously ill and injured patients are admitted to the hospital.
About the operating rooms The new hospital building in Karolinska Solna has 35 operating rooms, which are designed to be flexible – enabling them to be adapted to meet the demands of the university hospital’s various surgical procedures. The basic equipment includes surgical tables, surgical lamps, a large set of mobile surgical equipment, and an integration solution – which is entirely new for Karolinska. There are also hybrid rooms, while Da Vinci robot surgery rooms were also added, requiring some additional retrofit works.
In fact, all of the rooms are integrated,
Karolinska University Hospital.
with a number of cameras and large medical TV screens, allowing clinical staff to perform a variety of procedures and transmit the live screenings outside of the OR, for shared learning and observation. All of the rooms are similar in size ) with a few exceptions (90 m2 ). The identical location of
(60 m2 one of 120 m2
typical equipment makes it possible for operating teams to use different rooms without the need to adapt to a new set-up – all key system elements are the same. The rooms are also prepared for future changes through their construction design – each of them has additional steel frames in the suspended ceiling, to enable extra pendants to be added during the room’s life cycle. As new procedures are introduced, the equipment can keep pace and rooms can be adjusted in the shortest possible time.
Choosing the ventilation solution All of the Karolinska operating rooms are Ultra Clean (able to reach below 5 cfu/m3
and
and live operations). All of the operating rooms are using the controlled dilution- based air distribution method, which is a specific mixing method of air distribution. Based on the latest research results, this method of ventilation was chosen to maximise safety, flexibility, and personal wellbeing. This article provides an insight into the decision-making process, and some of the critical factors that needed to be considered.
Planning flexibility in active sampling, in simulated
This article, entitled 'Ultra clean ventilation at New Karolinska Hospital', first appeared in the IFHE Digest 2020. HEJ thanks the IFHE, the author, and the editor of the publication, for allowing its reproduction here in slightly edited form.
While designing the hospital, the construction/design team did not have a clear understanding, from medical personnel, of which procedures would be performed in the operating rooms. This is a common challenge, but the type of procedures carried out can also change frequently over the building’s lifecycle. Therefore, all rooms needed to be fitted to accommodate virtually all procedures. As a consequence, ultra-clean levels of air were required – everywhere. The system that was chosen (Halton VITA OR Space 5), combined with improved clothing for the surgical team (emission factor of 0.7 cfu/s/person), ensures the entire room is kept below 5 cfu/m3
in active sampling. The new November 2020 Health Estate Journal 25
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