Some university students have decided to create a suction aspirator that is intended for use in the developing world. The students found out that many hospitals in those parts of the world don’t have aspirators because they have found that they are unable to buy replacement parts to repair the models currently on the market. As a result, they simply go without, and this inhibits many kinds of treatments. So they set to work to create one that only needs easily available parts in order to repair and replace parts of it. Another problem they had to fix was that they needed have it powered using greatly varying power sources. They were able to solve it, and build the aspirator using parts that cost a total of less than $100 or so. It is really great to see that people are working on this so hard! Take a look at how they did it.

How do you know if you need respiratory therapy in the first place? One way is to undergo an “oxygen saturation test”. Undergo is kind of a strange word for it, as it is actually a very easy test. One way to test it is to use a little clip that the doctor or nurse puts over your finger and it uses a laser to measure how much oxygen is actually in your blood. The laser bounces off red blood cells with oxygen on it and it gets picked up by the sensor. If it doesn’t bounce, it goes through and the sensor picks that up. This way, a person can easily find out how much oxygen is actually sitting in their blood. Then the other way is to actually take blood out and measure it more directly in a lab. Either way, if the oxygen level is low, this may be a sign of some bigger disease and then more tests can be run in order to diagnose what it is.

I was just looking at some more information about hyperbaric oxygen therapy again. It is an interesting study that I found. They were looking for information about whether hyperbaric therapy helps people with brain and other spinal cord problems. The study looked at various other studies that had been done on this topic over the years. In terms of basic brain injuries, there is some evidence that oxygen therapy will help limit the immediate effects of a neurological event and length of comas and a light decrease in mortality. In terms of the other issues that they were looking into, cerebral palsy and stroke, there wasn’t enough evidence for them to understand what the risks are and what the benefits are. They were mainly looking at non-intermediate effects of the oxygen therapy, so it was more about survival and functional changes rather than smaller issues of swelling and such. Read more here.

I have just learned about another kind of oxygen therapy that I’ve never heard of before. It’s called hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The name pretty much says it all: hyper=extra and baric=pressure (like in Barometric pressure, or isobars). It delivers oxygen at a pressure substantially higher than in the normal atmospheric pressure. According to the website, 2.5 times the regular pressure. What does this do? This will allow the blood to carry extra oxygen to organs and tissue throughout the body. This can help out people with decompression sickness, gangrene, carbon monoxide poisoning patients, burns and other conditions. People with regular wounds but with otherwise poor circulation will also benefit from this kind of therapy. It seems to be a fairly regular kind of oxygen therapy like you’d find it most hospitals, but it’s good to know what it’s called.

If you have a humidifier, should you use tap water or special distilled or bottled water? I have taken it upon myself to find the answer to this question. According to the EPA government organization, tap water is generally understood to be ok to put into your humidifier. However, some people note the appearance of “white dust” connected to the use of tap water in the humidifier. This indicates that many minerals are being dispersed via the humidifier. As a result, you may have to take one of two options. You could put bottled or distilled water into your machine. Those are usually perfect. Otherwise you could use a water filtering system to get the bulk of your minerals out of the water before putting it into your machine. These aren’t perfect, so “white dust” may still occur, but it’s a good start. Most minerals aren’t dangerous anyway, so don’t worry too much. But it’s good to keep an eye on it.

A few weeks ago I wrote about humidifiers. But I failed to mention the point of talking about them at all. In other words, why are humidifiers good to use? First of all, especially in the winter months, humidifiers help overall health. Those who live in cooler climates and in heated homes will know that the air is so dry that you can feel really bad at some level. Those with respiratory ailments know this more than most. Dry air can make anyone start on a coughing fit but someone with asthma for example would start coughing and have a real difficulty stopping. So with moistened air, they are much more able to sit comfortably and keep breathing easily. Moistened air also holds heat in the room much more easily, which is another comfort level improvement. Take a look at some more general info about humidifiers.

How do they take care of people with respiratory issues in space?  The answer is that they probably don’t: they vett the people in the astronaut program pretty carefully, and they probably watch out that the people they choose don’t have any particular problems. But they are thinking about it. With the possibility of getting more people into space and of longer-term space travel, they are looking into this issue. They want to figure out how on would get oxygen to someone in orbit, and they find that an oxygen concentrator would do very well for it. Usually 3-4 LPM would be sufficient and most concentrators can get that done just fine. This site gives some examples of which concentrators and concentrator specifications would work well for it. Take a look, even if just out of curiosity.

This site has a nice visual demonstration of how a nebulizer is to be used. It explains that nebulizers are used to treat asthma and other diseases where a medicine needs to be breathed in. It will unleash a stream of medicine-filled air over a longer period of time. You have to clean the nebulizer off, and hook it up to an air compressor. Then you put your prescribed medicine in the medicine cup and attach the hose and mouthpiece to it. Then you (or the user, whoever that might be) breaths the medicine in with long, deep, consistent breaths. It usually takes about 15 minutes or so to finish it up. And then it should be cleaned.  Anyway, I just gave you the information, but take a look at the pictures, just to clarify a little bit.

There is a great how-to article explaining how you should use a humidifier most efficiently. It explains that the machine should be cleaned every three days, so that it can filter the air properly and so that the water being put into the air is as clean as possible. And only use the kinds of cleaning products permitted in the user’s manual. It should, incidentally, not be used simply all the time, but only on an as-necessary basis. For example when it’s wintertime and the heating is on, the air might be particularly dry. For some people, this is simply annoying, but for some people it’s downright painful. This would be an especially good time to use a humidifier. However, if you live in an area that has plenty of humidity at all, it’s probably not worth the cost to run it during the humid months. If you can, use water with minimal mineral content so that it doesn’t clog up or need even more frequent cleaning.