Mark Gormley

Mark Gormley, Bristol

CURRICULUM VITAE

Mark Gormley is a Wellcome Trust doctoral fellow and Consultant Senior Lecturer in Oral Surgery at the University of Bristol. He received his dental degree with honours from the University of Dundee and following this, completed longitudinal foundation and dental core training posts in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, prior to undertaking Oral Surgery specialty training via an NIHR academic clinical fellowship. Dr Gormley has completed both a Masters in Genomic Medicine at the University of Cambridge and a Masters in Medical Education, which lead to fellowship of the higher education academy. He has sat on the British Association of Oral Surgeons council and is currently a Dental Specialty Ambassador for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and a committee member for the Academy of Medical Sciences INSPIRE programme. He has been awarded research grants from the Association of British Academic Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, Royal College of Surgeons of England and UK Research and Innovation. Dr Gormley’s research interest is in genetic epidemiology, however more recently he has been working with the Bristol Aerosol Research Centre on characterising aerosol generated during medical and dental procedures, as part of the AERosolisation And Transmission Of SARS-CoV-2 in Healthcare Settings (AERATOR) study.

ABSTRACT

Aerosol generation in clinical settings and pulmonary effects of aerosol

Aerosol generating procedures (AGPs) are defined as any procedure releasing airborne particles <5 μm in size from the respiratory tract. There remains uncertainty about which dental procedures constitute an AGP and their risk. Furthermore, aerosol particle size and composition are dynamic, responding to environmental changes, which affects the amount of aerosol reaching or depositing in specific regions of the lung. Results from the AERosolisation And Transmission Of SARS-CoV-2 in Healthcare Settings (AERATOR) study will be presented. Here, we quantified the aerosol number concentration generated during a range of periodontal, oral surgery and orthodontic patient procedures using an aerodynamic particle sizer. Measurements were conducted with a sufficiently low background to detect a patient’s cough, enabling confident identification of aerosol. Phantom head control experiments for each procedure were performed under the same conditions. Where aerosol was detected during a patient procedure, we assessed whether the size distribution could be explained by the non-salivary contaminated instrument source in the respective phantom head control procedure. The aerosol size distribution for each procedure provided a robust fingerprint of aerosol emission from a source. The literature on pulmonary effects of AGPs, in terms of their distribution and deposition in the respiratory tree will also be reviewed.