Occupational Noise in the Central Sterile Supply Department: A Narrative Review of Exposure, Mechanisms, and Control

The Central Sterile Supply Department (CSSD) functions as the critical control point for hospital infection prevention, yet its equipment-intensive environment generates occupational noise exposure that has been systematically overlooked in both the healthcare quality and occupational health literature. We conducted a focused narrative review across PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus (up to March 2026) to examine the prevalence, psychophysiological mechanisms, and management of noise in CSSD settings. Four peer-reviewed studies investigating CSSD noise exposure were identified, conducted in Chinese and Brazilian hospitals. The evidence indicates that air guns and pressure steam sterilizers constitute the dominant noise sources, with self-reported exposure associated with psychological symptoms and sleep disturbance in approximately one-quarter of staff. Notably, health concerns may mediate a substantial proportion of the noise-psychology relationship, suggesting a cognitive-affective pathway that may be as theoretically significant as direct physiological damage, although this cross-sectional finding requires longitudinal confirmation. No study has empirically linked CSSD noise to sterilization failures, device damage, or patient-level outcomes. Drawing on this nascent evidence base and adjacent occupational noise theory, we advance three testable propositions: that CSSD noise may constitute a systemic quality risk factor, that subjective cognitive-affective appraisal plays a primary mediating role, and that effective management requires multi-level integration across engineering, administrative, and psychological domains. This review reframes CSSD noise from an ergonomic nuisance to an embedded environmental stressor and charts a structured research agenda for objective measurement, mechanism validation, and intervention evaluation.