Evaluating Filtering Facepiece Respirator Wearing-Comfort of Lebanese Red Cross Healthcare Providers

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased the usage of various types of face masks. In addition, it triggered the rapid manufacture of new production lines of masks to cope with the unprecedented demand to overcome worldwide shortages. Such masks, which were previously used mostly by the health care personnel, became a daily necessity to the greater mainstream population. This rapid and sudden increase in their usage and the fact that new masks' innovations are progressively emerging to meet the growing global shortage requires an ongoing analysis on the factors associated with the fit and comfort while using these masks.

This paper presents the first translation and validation of the R-COMFI questionnaire to evaluate the comfort of a newly developed filtering face-piece respirator by the research team at the University of Antwerp. The questionnaire, which consists of 3 sections: Discomfort, General wearing experience, and Function, was translated from English to Arabic and involved 43 participants in the Lebanese Red Cross healthcare field based in Lebanon.

The results showed discomfort factors that are mostly related to breathability and sweating caused by mask usage. Additionally, the results revealed that female respondents found the mask significantly less comfortable than male respondents (p-value with the two-tailed test is 0.0319), which confirmed that future validations should consider the concerns of both genders, and validated the R-COMFI translation exercise detailed in this paper.

The contribution of this paper can be pinned down into three findings. The first finding is related to the discomfort issues. The second finding highlighted a significant difference in comfort experience between females and males. The last finding is the translation validation of the R-COMFI instrument, which confirmed that the questionnaire can be applied among wider geographical locations.