1.1 Macroscopically visible droplets
Macroscopically visible droplet spread was assessed in six studies, all of which used florescent tracers to map droplet spread13-18. All of these studies demonstrated that use of a high-speed drill aerosolised droplets outside of the nasal cavity.13-18 No detectable droplet spread was detected in two studies considering use of non-powered “cold” instrumentation,13,14 and one assessing utilisation of an ultrasonic aspirator (UST-2001; Stryker Co., USA).14
Both Sharma et al. (2020)14 and Leong et al. (2021)15 found that microdebrider use on cadaveric nasal mucosa had the propensity to generate extranasal droplets seen on examination under UV light. Contradictory results were found by other groups though with Workman et al. (2020a)13 and Jones et al. (2020)16, working in similar cadaveric settings, noting that microdebrider application to nasal mucosa did not produce detectable droplets.