Creative and Inexpensive Solution for Ventilator Shortages

Ventilators


 Necessity is the mother of invention!

Story at-a-glance

• COVID-19 may lead to inflammation in your airways or fluid in your lungs, requiring mechanical ventilation to pump oxygen into your body
• If ventilator shortages continue, and the number of people who need them at one time increase, doctors may be faced with making unthinkable choices, but creative solutions have been suggested
• Isinnova, an Italian 3D printing company, was contacted by Dr. Renato Favero, a former head physician of the Gardone Valtrompia Hospital, with a plan to create an emergency ventilator mask by modifying a snorkeling mask already on the market
• Isinnova has posted the design for its patented Charlotte valve on its website, stating that they want it to be available to all hospitals in need of it
• Data published in a pilot study in 2016 revealed that a single ventilator could quickly be modified, using readily available plastic tubing, to ventilate four simulated adults
• Doctors have been modifying ventilators to potentially treat anywhere from two to nine patients at one time

“Mechanical ventilation is the main supportive treatment for critically ill patients” infected with novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), according to a February 2020 study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.¹
But severe shortages of these life-saving machines have become a common concern echoed by hospitals across the U.S., with medical professionals and government officials alike calling for increased production of this critical resource.
Ventilators help people breathe when they can’t do it on their own. Sometimes referred to as “breathing machines,” ventilators help pump oxygen into your body and carbon dioxide out via a tube that goes into your mouth and windpipe in a process called intubation. The ventilator may automatically take a set number of “breaths” each minute or be programmed to kick in if you don’t take a breath in a predetermined amount of time.²
Either way, the machines are crucial for helping some patients survive until their lungs begin working on their own. In the case of COVID-19, it may lead to inflammation in your airways or fluid in your lungs, requiring mechanical ventilation to pump oxygen into your body. By some estimates, has many as 25% of people with COVID-19 become critically ill, and may need a ventilator to help them breathe.³
If ventilator shortages continue, and the number of people who need them at one time increase, doctors may be faced with making unthinkable choices about who gets to live or die based on who gets the ventilator and who does not. Creative solutions have emerged that may help, however, including the use of a converted snorkeling mask and converting ventilators to service more than one patient at a time.

Emergency Ventilator Mask Made From Snorkeling Mask

Isinnova, an Italian 3D printing company, was contacted by Dr. Renato Favero, a former head physician of the Gardone Valtrompia Hospital, with an idea to overcome the shortage of hospital Continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, masks for sub-intensive therapy.⁴
Isinnova has previously used 3D printing to make ventilator valves for local hospitals, leading Favero to seek them out for a plan to create an emergency ventilator mask by modifying a snorkeling mask already on the market.
While full ventilators breathe both in and out for a patient, CPAP machines, which are often used to treat severe sleep apnea, regulate the pressure and level of oxygen that reaches the lungs, using mild air pressure to keep breathing airways open.
According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the treatment “involves using a CPAP machine that includes a mask or other device that fits over your nose or your nose and mouth, straps to position the mask, a tube that connects the mask to the machine’s motor, and a motor that blows air into the tube.”⁵
Isinnova contacted Decathlon, the producer of the snorkeling Easybreath mask, and was able to create the emergency mask in just three days. “We had to do it very quickly because it was a matter of saving lives,” Isinnova engineer Alessandro Romaioli told Fox News. “We didn’t do it as a usual project, where we would have had time to check it three, four times. We just had to do it as quick as we could."⁶
Isinnova initially printed about 50 special valves that they call the “Charlotte valve” designed to guarantee the mask’s connection to the ventilator, and tested it out at the Chiari Hospital. Isinnova explained:⁷

“The prototype as a whole has been tested on one of our colleagues directly inside the Chiari Hospital, connected to the ventilator body, and has proven to be correctly working. The hospital itself was enthusiastic about the idea and decided to test the device on a patient in need. The testing was successful.”