Scientists develop new, safer way to share ventilators for COVID-19 patients

Researchers, including one of Indian inception, have concocted another way to deal with sharing ventilators between patients, which they accept could be utilized if all else fails to treat COVID-19 patients in intense respiratory misery. The analysts, including Shriya Srinivasan from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, noticed that as more COVID-19 patients experience intense respiratory trouble, there has been a lot of discussion over sharing ventilators.

This involves splitting air tubes into multiple branches so that two or more patients can be connected to the same machine, said Srinivasan, lead author of the research published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

A few doctors’ affiliations have debilitated this work on, saying it presents hazard to patients, on account of the trouble in guaranteeing that every patient is accepting the perfect measure of air, the analysts said.

Presently, a group at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital has thought of another way to deal with parting ventilators, which they accept could address a significant number of these well being concerns.

They have exhibited its adequacy in research center tests, yet they despite everything alert it ought to be utilized uniquely if all else fails during a crisis, when a patient’s life is in question.

“We hope this approach, which requires off-the-shelf components, can ultimately help patients in extreme need of ventilator support,” said Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor.
“We recognise that ventilator sharing is not the standard of care, and interventions like this one would only be recommended as a last recourse,” Traverso said.
Ventilators are machines that help people breathe by delivering oxygen through a tube placed in the mouth or the nose. Countries around the world have struggled to obtain enough ventilators to handle the Covid-19 outbreak, the researchers said.

The MIT team incorporated flow valves, one for each patient’s branch, that allow them to control the amount of air that each receives.
“These flow valves allow you to personalise the flow to each patient based on their needs,” Srinivasan said.
“They also ensure that if one patient either improves or deteriorates, quickly or slowly, there’s a way to adapt for that,” she said.

The arrangement additionally incorporates pressure discharge valves that can keep a lot of air from going into one patient’s lungs, just as security measures including alerts that go off when a patient’s air consumption changes, the scientists said.

To make their arrangement, the analysts utilized parts that are typically accessible in an emergency clinic.

The parts could likewise be acquired at tool shops and sanitized, they said.

A typical ventilator produces enough air pressure to supply six to eight patients at a time, but the research team does not recommend using one ventilator for more than two people, as the setup becomes more complicated.
The researchers first tested their setup using a ventilator to split airflow between a pig and an artificial lung — a machine that simulates the function of the lungs.

By changing the properties of the artificial lung, they could model many of the changing conditions that might occur in patients; they also showed that the ventilator settings could be adjusted to compensate for them.
The researchers later showed that they could ventilate two animals on one ventilator and maintain the necessary airflow to both.

Credit: TimesofIndia

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