SAN ANTONIO – In response to a growing need for ventilators, a group of local anesthesiologists has developed a 3D-printed splitter template.
The doctors say it will allow a single ventilator to treat more than one patient at a time.
A group of national medical organizations don’t recommend these devices and said other options can be used during the crisis.
Dr. Bryan Lai is one of four doctors in San Antonio who created the 3D-printable splitter for ventilators. He said this could allow for more than one patient to use a machine.
“What we did was make it accessible to everyone in the world by making a 3D-printable file that anyone in the world can download and print right now and use on a ventilator,” said Lai, an anesthesiologist and pain medicine physician.
The doctors began the project over two weeks ago. Dr. Jennifer Elian, an anesthesiologist and pain medicine physician, said they saw many places running out of resources, and they wanted to help.
“This device that we’ve come up with is not by any means a solution. It’s more like a temporizing measure, butm you know, it’s not meant to keep multiple patients on a ventilator for an extended period of time,” Elian said.
The president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists said splitting ventilators would be the last resort.
Dr. Mary Dale Peterson said this technique is not recommended because patients need different ventilator settings.
“Patients that have COVID-19 and progressed in needing ventilation, a lot of them end up with what’s called adult respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. And those patients are very difficult to ventilate and require sometimes moment-to-moment changes in the ventilator settings,” Peterson said.
Peterson said there are other options for hospitals.
“You might be surprised that anesthesia gas machines all have ventilators on them. And so since we’ve canceled all these elective surgeries, we have a lot of anesthesia gas machine ventilators that can be repurposed to take care of ICU patients,” Peterson said.
With cases going up every day, the local doctors said something needs to be done.
“With the current projects in some areas, it could be a matter of weeks before they run out ventilators,” Lai said.
The team of doctors said this product is not approved yet by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Erian said they are working with the FDA to get an emergency use authorization.
COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new virus, stands for coronavirus disease 2019. The disease first appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, but spread around the world in early 2020, causing the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic in March.
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