Title: A SIMULATION STUDY ON QUAD/DUO PATIENT SPLIT MECHANICAL VENTILATOR

Abstract:

Respiratory diseases and injury-induced respiratory failure are among the major public health problems in both developed and developing countries. Asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and other chronic respiratory conditions are widespread. Patients with underlying lung diseases may develop respiratory failure due to a variety of challenges and they can be supported by mechanical ventilation. A mechanical ventilator is a machine that helps a patient breathe (ventilate) when they cannot breathe on their own due to a critical illness. The COVID-19 outbreak has become a global issue as this new pandemic socially and economically affected the entire world. This virus has caused a substantial global health problem with very significant economic and social impacts. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 23 January 2022, over 346 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported worldwide, and many of those critically ill have required days of supportive invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) as part of their treatment. Most developing nations, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa have been facing ventilator shortages for a long time. The high cost of ventilators has also contributed to limited access to life-saving machines in countries like Zambia. The need for ventilators in many hospitals in most developing nations has surpassed the supply. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has exposed critical shortages of ventilators in both developing and developed countries. One possibility to address this problem is the utilization of a single ventilator on two to four patients. The need to carry out mathematical modeling and simulation of the machine-patient configurations to ascertain the feasibility as well as understand the limitations of this approach is nontrivial. This paper presents a simulation study on the implementation of a single ventilator on two or more patients with different lung compliances. Results show that in theory, it is technically possible to ventilate two or more patients provided a control strategy is implemented to regulate the inhalation tube resistances. It has also been demonstrated that ventilating two or more patients with unequal lung compliances from a single ventilator without a controlling resistance will lead to clinically significant reductions in tidal volume in the patient with the lowest respiratory compliance. The study demonstrates that it may be possible to achieve the same tidal volumes in two and four patients with mismatched lung compliances, and the results show that the tidal volume of one patient can be manipulated independently of the others.

Biography:

George Pule is a 3rd-year Biomedical Engineering Technology Student at Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and Commerce; and he is a student Member of the Engineering Institution of Zambia and IEEE, Engineering in medicine and biology society (EMBS). He is the inventor and Lead innovator of the Vent Splitting Device (VSD) under development at Evelyn Hone College with sponsorship from the National Science and Technology Council. The invention received a grant from the National Science and Technology Innovation Youth Fund. He presented an abstract on ventilator-sharing methods at the 2022 IEEE EMBS Middle East Africa international conference in Uganda.