Minimum Ventilation Requirements in Patient Bed Areas: A Comparison of International Standards (ST-16-C041)

There are significant differences in international health care ventilation standards.  This paper is one in a series of benchmarking investigations of those variances. These studies identify and capture best practices from among the international standards.

This paper compares minimum ventilation requirements for operating rooms and procedure rooms, from four international standards. The standards compared are; ASHRAE-170 Ventilation for health care facilities (US),  DIN-1946 – VAC systems in buildings and rooms used in the health care sector (Germany), HTM-03-01 Specialized ventilation for health care premises (UK), and UNE 100713 Instalaciones de acondicionamiento de aire en hospitales (Spain).

The comparison identifies the minimum (i.e. most permissive) ventilation requirements in six different requirement areas:  outdoor air ventilation, total room air ventilation, supply air filter efficiency, room temperature, room humidity and room pressurization.  Results are normalized to common units, compared and discussed in context of the four standards.