Negative pressure ventilator

(Written often iron lung ) An iron lung was the first clinical device that allowed a mechanical ventilation of a person. By 1920, they developed the American engineer Philip Drinker for ventilation lung disease patients. Thereby the patient's body up to the neck is fully inside a hollow cylinder. The head remains outside. The apparatus includes an airtight seal at the neck and generates a negative pressure. Thus, the ambient pressure pushes outside air through the nose and mouth of the patient into the lungs. Accordingly, the exhalation takes place by establishing a positive pressure in the chamber.

Historical application

Iron lungs were applied in the past to polio sufferers. Polio is a viral disease, which may lead to paralysis of the muscles, including the diaphragm. Many polio patients needed the iron lungs only in the acute phase of the disease until the resumption of muscle function. Some patients, they used only overnight, others continuously.

Drinker tested his invention first in self- test before the first use of an iron lung on October 12, 1928, in Boston at Children 's Hospital. A diseased polio eight year old girl who had fallen into a coma, could be revived within a few minutes. Only after the product has been applied for a patent, it was presented to the public on 14 September 1929.

The devices were still produced until about 1970. From 2004, however, no more maintenance was offered, although still about a dozen people were obtained by an iron lung alive.

In 2008, a 61- year-old patient died after 58 years of treatment, because the power went out and the emergency generator failed. On 30 October 2009, the Australian June Middleton died at the age of 83 years, as the Thornbury nursing home in Melbourne announced. Middleton came in 2006 in the Guinness Book of Records - as a patient, who had lived in an iron lung longer than any other.

Technical progress

The iron lung is almost completely disappeared with the introduction of endotracheal intubation from the use of modern medicine. Today, patients are ventilated with paralysis of the respiratory muscles with ventilators. The air is brought by pressure into the lungs. A temporary replacement of lung function can be achieved by the use of an oxygenator, as he comes to heart-lung machines.

Lately come occasionally also called respiratory pacemaker is used, analogous to pacemaker systems via diaphragmatic near electrodes stimulate the mostly inactive by high paraplegia Phrenikusnerven and so bring back the diaphragm to contract. A relatively complicated tracheostomy care is no longer necessary; However, then the respiratory pacemaker must be serviced.

A modern development which began with the iron lung negative pressure ventilation is the cuirass ventilation.

Devices received

An iron lung can now be considered among others in these locations (alphabetically by location ):

• Berlin Medical Historical Museum
• Horst- Stoeckel - Museum for the History of Anesthesiology, Bonn
• German Hygiene Museum in Dresden
• University Hospital Giessen and Marburg, Giessen new building at the site of surgery
• City Museum Gütersloh
• German Medical History Museum in Ingolstadt
• Medicine and Pharmacy Collection of the University of Kiel
• University of Leipzig, Carl- Ludwig- Institute of Physiology
• Deutsches Museum in Munich
• University Hospital of Münster
• Museum of the University of Tübingen
• Pathological- Anatomical Collection of NHM Vienna in Narrenturm
• Medical History Museum in Zurich