MEDICAL Tech; Why not build a blood oxygenizer ?

[RJSV]

   Medical Stuff turns some people off, sorry.   But I tried to construct the proper Google Search terms, and can't find much:
   How about a substitute for the usual Anastasia mask and oxygen maintaining for times when a surgery patient is out and not breathing on their own?

That might be similar to blood transfusion types of equipment,  pulling out some of the Patient's blood, for (oxygen) infusion before replacing the blood back into body.

Just thinking, as I viewed some emergency room video.   The person (adult) had a 7 inch wrench lodged in his throat!   Glad to view that was a success.
But then I wondered how did the doctors do that, as surgery often involves a mask and oxygen administered.
Just thinking....

[CatalinaWOW]

Such things exist.  One thing I once saw had many sterile disks rotating half submerged in the patients blood before returning the blood to the patients body.  The blood picks up oxygen on the large surface area of the disks.  It is my understanding that there are few circumstances where these are appropriate for use as they are very damaging to the blood.

[Monkeh]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygenation

[SiliconWizard]

Intubation may look impressive, but it's still the least invasive way of oxygenating someone.
The tool they use for intubation doesn't look very friendly, admittedly. The main risk is that if misused, they can break some teeth. But that's relatively rare.

Extracorporeal circulation is a very invasive procedure (even if it just looks like plugging a couple tubes) and used only if there is absolutely no other solution. You can't just do that using standard perfusion.

[RJSV]

   Part of the motivation is to avoid having to cut into neck and throat,  keeping in mind that I'm just an armchair observer.
Apparently they have to do traciotomy if injuries or surgical area prevents using tube through the mouth.
   Maybe there is possibility of sending nano-sized devices into the body,  assuming more advancement has to take place.   You send in your agent-nanobot, with 2 oxygen atoms, it releases the O2 inside, then exits the body.  Probably terribly naive of course.
First thought was a 'sugar' with the O2 attached, then they separate and the 'sugar' gets absorbed, rather than somehow getting out of the body.

   Very naive, as I suppose simply an O2 molecule needs to be binding with some carrier molecule in the blood, rather than a simple dissolved gas,  thats almost a mini-bubble.
I believe that's embolism which isn't good.
From SCUBA diver class we learned that dissolved gas is bad,  maybe can cause stroke.

Just speculating, as science advances might enable processes, internally, rather than the 'hooked up to big machine' type approach.

   Either those 'carriers' I'm suggesting would be exiting (the body) or would become metabolized ?   I suppose they can't just 'dump' an O2 molecule into blood somewhere.
Good place to start, (for my own understanding) would be study the lungs and processes there.

[Andy Chee]

Starting point might be to research the equipment used for double lung transplant.  Obviously the patient needs to be oxygenated somehow whilst their damaged lungs are removed, and new lungs transplanted.

[dietert1]

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462970/
At INCOR "Fundacao Zerbini" in Sao Paulo they expose a historical brasilian version of the machine. It is about the size of a car engine, but absolutely clean and shiny.

Regards, Dieter

[Wallace Gasiewicz]

ECMO:     


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygenation 


   
Not without it's own risks.