Hacking the crisis: Researchers invent a safer way of sharing ventilators

潜在的呼吸道呼吸器短缺孕育了让两个或更多患者共享一个呼吸机的想法。这涉及将空气管分成多个分支，因此可以将两名或更多患者连接到同一台机器。您甚至可以找到描述这种做法的YouTube视频。3月下旬，纽约市的至少一家医院开始以这种方式在患者之间共享呼吸机。

但是，呼吸机只能作为最后的手段共享。一个问题：共享呼吸机的患者必须具有相同的肺部能力。如果一个患者的肺功能改善或另一个患者的恶化，则一名患者可能会收到适量的空气，但另一个患者可能会失去运气。

A team of researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital say they have a way of splitting ventilators which could address many of the safety concerns. They have demonstrated its effectiveness in the lab, but they still caution it should be used only as a last resort during an emergency, when a patient’s life is at stake.

Basically 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 personalize the flow to each patient based on their needs,” says Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.. “They also ensure that if one patient either improves or deteriorates, quickly or slowly, there’s a way to adapt for that.”

The setup also includes pressure release valves that can prevent too much air from going into one patient’s lungs, as well as safety measures including alarms that go off when a patient’s air intake changes.

为了创建他们的设置，研究人员使用了医院通常可用的零件。研究人员说，这些零件也可以在五金商店中获得并进行消毒。一个典型的呼吸机会产生足够的气压，一次每次提供六到八名患者，但是随着设置变得更加复杂，研究团队不建议将一个呼吸机使用一个以上的人使用。

The researchers first tested their setup on a ventilator split between a pig and an artificial lung. By changing the properties of the artificial lung, they could model many of the changing conditions that might arise in patients; they also showed that the ventilator settings could be adjusted to compensate. They later showed that they could ventilate two animals on one ventilator and maintain the necessary airflow to both.

研究人员现在正试图获得美国食品药品监督管理局的紧急使用授权，该授权将在COVID-19-19大流行期间对患者使用这种方法的临时批准。

The researchers — Shriya Srinivasan, Khalil B Ramadi, Francesco Vicario, Declan Gwynne, Alison Hayward, David Lagier, Robert Langer, Joseph J. Frassica, Rebecca M. Baron, and Giovanni Traverso — published their work in the journal科学翻译医学。标题：一种可快速部署的个性化系统，用于增强呼吸机能力。

---

Filed Under:Hack the Crisis: Engineering through COVID-19
标记为：#covidengineering

---