Dear all, just had a quick read through this thread and found it extremely interesting. Unfortunately there are two points that I feel need making with regard to reverting back to old ventilator types.
1. The components required to make the earlier generation ventilators are no longer available and the tooling needed to make these components will have long since been scrapped. I.e. analog gauges certain valves and pressure transducers etc.
2. Compared with today’s current turbine ventilators the older ventilators are somewhat difficult to operate and require a great deal of experience when dealing with long-term respiratory patients.
Today’s ventilators are in the main driven by high speed turbines which can be controlled in a rapid and infinitely variable mode. The pneumatics within such ventilators are extremely simple to construct and would enable new manufacturers to produce the hardware side with limited experience. The single most important component of today’s ventilators is software and this would need toSupplied from the current manufacturers to subcontractors under license.
As we know there are two types of ventilation in medicine. The first is for maintenance, as found in time cycled constant flow pressure limited small box ventilators. Most of the older generation theatre ventilators where of this type of construction.
The ventilator is required when dealing with respiratory infections and disease for patients who will need long-term ventilation are infinitely more sophisticated and expensive. In a maintenance ventilator generally the patient is on it for maybe a few hours and once removed on the ventilator will spontaneously begin to Breathe again. The therapeutic ventilator as is used in ICU have modes that take the patient from being completely paralysed such as CMV, to A/C, to SIMV, CPAP all with pressure support. You can’t simply take a patient who has become over days ventilator dependent and switch it off and see them breathe spontaneously. “Weaning†is a critical part of the process.
