Brian Nguyen (l) adjusts mask on Daniel Choi, MD.
Face masks have been a part of our lives for more than a year, helping to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But many have elastic ear bands, which some studies show can be uncomfortable and may cause pressure injury and headaches. Brian Nguyen, MD, an ophthalmology resident at HUP, discovered this during his internship in Chicago. “I was wearing a mask 14 hours a day and it felt like my head hurt,” he said. “And on the back side of my ear, it was red and painful.”
Surgical masks used in the OR have ties instead of bands, which makes them more comfortable, but he knew that not many people had access to them. And the more uncomfortable a mask is, the less inclined people would be to wear it, impacting many in the community who are especially vulnerable to worse health outcomes.
Nguyen wanted to do something to help. When he was working in the ICU in Chicago, he used a mask that had adjustable hooks which attached to each of the mask’s elastic bands and then wound around the back of the neck. It redistributed ear pressure to the external hooks.
“Tweaking” a basic template of the attachements from the NIH website, Nguyen created his own design, one that was “not too thick or too thin,” he said. He printed out prototypes on semi-rigid material using the 3D printer in the University’s Biomedical Library. When he finally hit what he considered the best design, he printed out 100 attachments and initiated a pilot study at Scheie Eye Insitute. At the conclusion of the study, the hook attachment led to an 80 percent increase in wearing a mask, not only at work but outside of the hospital as well.
Nguyen has used the Penn Medicine CAREs grant funding to produce the masks. To date, he has distributed over 500 hooks to patients at the United Community Clinic, helping to protect this vulnerable population in West Philadelphia.