Impending Lung Damage: Automatic Respiratory System Saves Preemie Lung

    

    

Doctors newspaper online, 11.06.2019

    

        
        
        

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Threatening lung damage

MANNHEIM. In premature babies with underdeveloped lungs, artificial respiration may be necessary. However, it often leads to acute or chronic lung damage – especially if the ventilator is working against the patient. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA at the University of Heidelberg are therefore developing a gentler process, according to a statement from the institute.

Various complications can occur with artificial respiration: Volutrauma occurs when the ventilator presses too much air into the small lung.

A barotrauma occurs when the apparatus introduces air at too high pressure, especially if the premature baby is about to exhale. To avoid both, doctors have so far helped themselves with a tube through their mouths or noses through which they ventilate, reminding the institute.

It leaves room in the trachea to allow excess air to escape. Unfortunately, this is not always particularly gentle and doctors can only respond to the rapidly changing needs of small patients manually.

Thorax monitoring is the name of the small device developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute: "In principle, this is a measuring device that recognizes whether an artificially ventilated patient wants to inhale or exhale," says one of the developers, Jan Ringkamp from the Fraunhofer Institute, quoted in the message. "This allows a ventilator to adapt to the patient's needs without delay."

The system uses two antennas mounted on the patient's chest. One sends out an electromagnetic wave, the other receives it. The researchers take advantage of the fact that muscle, fat and tissue have different dielectric properties than the respiratory air in the lungs. Sounds complicated, but actually quite simple: When inhaled, the lungs fill with air and expand.

The changed proportion of air in the thorax causes the electromagnetic wave to move faster. On exhalation, on the other hand, the lungs collapse and the electromagnetic wave progresses more slowly in the tissue.

There is thus a clearly measurable difference between inhalation and exhalation, which the thorax monitoring can register and forward to the ventilator. (eb)

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