Wearing of masks for obstetric regional anaesthesia. A postal survey.

A postal survey of 801 members of the Obstetric Anaesthetists Association was carried out in the United Kingdom and Ireland to investigate the use of surgical facemasks whilst performing spinal and epidural blocks. Two hundred and twenty three out of 539 respondents (41.3%) routinely wore masks for both spinals and epidurals; 22 (4.1%) wore masks only for epidurals; 21 (3.9%) wore masks only for spinals and 273 (50.6%) did not wear masks for either spinals or epidurals. Fifty out of 240 (21%) of those who routinely wore masks did not believe that wearing a mask reduced the risk of infection. Only 83 out of 259 (32%) mask wearers changed their masks between cases.