Forum Summary

A team of students at MIT is working to design a low-cost mechanical ventilator for use in developing countries and potentially for emergency use in the United States.  Mechanical ventilators are required to treat patients suffering from acute respiratory failure.  In some parts of the world, mechanical ventilators are not available because of their price tag and because of maintenance costs.  In developed nations, low-cost ventilators could be valuable in a mass casualty situation, as could be produced by an outbreak of severe respiratory illness.  The students at MIT have based their ventilator design on existing manual resuscitators, which are inexpensive and widely available.  The ventilator uses a cam to mechanically pump the resuscitator, and it is made of off-the-shelf parts so that it is easy to maintain.  The ventilator includes controls allowing the operator to adjust settings such as volume delivered and breaths per minute, and it also includes an alarm that sounds in response to dangerously high airway pressures.  In the future, the MIT students plan to minimize the size and cost of their prototype and to ensure that it complies with existing standards for mechanical ventilators.

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