from Hacker News

'Pandemic ventilator' could offer solution in potential 'worst case' scenario

by iqster on 3/22/20, 12:14 AM with 116 comments

  • by tcbawo on 3/22/20, 3:53 AM

    If you read enough news and Twitter, you will find some really heartbreaking descriptions of the folks on ventilators. For most, this is a Hail Mary attempt with only 50% survival rate. Many will have significant lung damage if they survive. We need more ventilators to be sure. But we desperately need to find ways to halt the progression of runaway lung inflammation that leads to needing a ventilator.

    Edit: this development looks very promising for 'sub-intensive' cases -- adapting decathlon masks to provide positive air pressure (to help reinflate lungs) without intubation or leaking contaminated exhaust: https://www.isinnova.it/easy-covid19-eng/. Some emerging theories of pathology suggest that lung function can be increased by reinflating collapsed alveoli with constant pressure: https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/cpap-covid/

  • by femto on 3/22/20, 3:50 AM

    What about a "Both Respirator"? [1]

    In the 1930s polio epidemic there was a shortage of "iron lung" respirators, which were expensive to produce. Edward Both invented a plywood version, which was cheap and easy to produce. A re-purposed car factory then churned them out by the thousand.

    Is a negative pressure ventilator relevant for COVID-19 treatment? (Any knowledgeable medicos here who can offer a critique?) If so, couldn't they be churned out by the thousand in a short space of time (ie. days)? My understanding is that the tooling is comparable to that used to produce a kitchen cabinet. They can even be manually operated in the absence of a motor or control system.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Both_respirator

  • by theamk on 3/22/20, 1:52 AM

    This seems pretty important:

    > While the standard for a conventional ventilator uses a mask or nose tubes and follows current guidelines, the pandemic ventilator is at a standard from the 1970s and requires a patient be intubated, the medical word used to describe putting a tube through someone's mouth and into their airway.

    Do intubated patients need more attention from nurses/doctors? It certainly sounds harder then putting on the mask.

  • by JohnBooty on 3/22/20, 4:42 AM

    From the article:

       "We're talking about a device that we want to 
   have available in the worst case conditions and strangely
   enough, COVID-19 is not the worst case envisioned," he 
   said.
    Made me think.

    Perhaps in 3, or 5, or 20 years....

    Maybe we'll be thankful that COVID-19 was sort of a "training wheels" pandemic... something that helped to prepare us for the even worse pandemics that are sure to follow.

    Deaths due to COVID-19 will be staggering, but it's somewhat mild as far as possible pandemic scenarios go. Imagine if it had mortality rates comparable to ebola, TB, etc.

    When this blows over, the world should be better prepared for the next one, with better procedures.... emergency stockpiles of ventilators, masks, etc.

    (Or at least we will be... until we go ten years without a pandemic... and all those stockpiles get liquidated in order to help some politician to balance a budget or whatever...)

  • by shaneprrlt on 3/22/20, 1:11 AM

    Looks like similar portable ventilators already exist in the market: https://mfimedical.com/products/allied-healthcare-epv200-por...

  • by pontifier on 3/22/20, 3:50 AM

    I keep wondering if the Iron Lung is going to make a comeback.

  • by swalsh on 3/22/20, 3:29 AM

    I've been wondering, it seems like people have been setting up systems where multiple patients are connected to a single ventilator (with individual regulators?) If that works, maybe it might be more efficient to solve the supply problem, not by building a million cheap individual ventilitors, but rather a few thousand mega ventilators designed for multiple people.

  • by eyeball on 3/22/20, 1:50 PM

    Can a sleep apnea machine (cpap, bipap) help if you get it and run into problems?

  • by ta1234567890 on 3/22/20, 5:14 AM

    Is it possible to kill the virus inside the body, the same way we kill it outside?

    For example, if one could hypothetically spray alcohol everywhere inside someone's lungs, would that kill the infection?

    If so, could a liquid/gas mixture be developed to deliver the right virus-killer substance directly to the lungs?

    Does anyone here know about PFCs-breathing treatments?[0]

    0: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/08/15/can_humans_...