Novel expandable architected breathing tube for improving airway securement in emergency care

Life-saving interventions utilize endotracheal intubation to secure a patient's airway, but performance of the clinical standard of care endotracheal tube (ETT) is inadequate. For instance, in the current COVID-19 crisis, patients can expect prolonged intubation. This protracted intubation may...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the mechanical behavior of biomedical materials 2021-02, Vol.114, p.104211-104211, Article 104211
Main Authors: Berard, David, Navarro, Juan David, Bascos, Gregg, Harb, Angel, Feng, Yusheng, De Lorenzo, Robert, Hood, R. Lyle, Restrepo, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
COVID-19 - therapy
Digital image correlation
Emergency Medical Services
Endotracheal tube
Equipment Design
Expandable cylinder
Expanding lattice
Humans
Intubation
Intubation, Intratracheal - instrumentation
Mechanical Phenomena
Pressure distribution
Respiratory System
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Life-saving interventions utilize endotracheal intubation to secure a patient's airway, but performance of the clinical standard of care endotracheal tube (ETT) is inadequate. For instance, in the current COVID-19 crisis, patients can expect prolonged intubation. This protracted intubation may produce health complications such as tracheal stenosis, pneumonia, and necrosis of tracheal tissue, as current ETTs are not designed for extended use. In this work, we propose an improved ETT design that seeks to overcome these limitations by utilizing unique geometries which enable a novel expanding cylinder. The mechanism provides a better distribution of the contact forces between the ETT and the trachea, which should enhance patient tolerability. Results show that at full expansion, our new ETT exerts pressures in a silicone tracheal phantom well within the recommended standard of care. Also, preliminary manikin tests demonstrated that the new ETT can deliver similar performance in terms of air pressure and air volume when compared with the current gold standard ETT. The potential benefits of this new architected ETT are threefold, by limiting exposure of healthcare providers to patient pathogens through streamlining the intubation process, reducing downstream complications, and eliminating the need of multiple size ETT as one architected ETT fits all.
ISSN:1751-6161
1878-0180
DOI:10.1016/j.jmbbm.2020.104211