TRACHEAL PRESSURE CONTROLLER FOR VENTILATORS

重症监护病人往往需要长时间机械通气。机械通气是通过放置在气管内的套管进行的。当气体进出患者时，管道上的压降会给患者带来额外的工作，并导致肺压力测量结果失真。我们已经开发了一种系统，可以使用标准的气管内管来测量肺部的压力。我们建议将该技术应用于增强机械呼吸机和改善医生使用的信息。我们将建立一个系统来测量气管压力从气管内管袖口。将制造一种装置来改变机械呼吸机所观察到的压力。我们将使用两种类型的呼吸机和一个机械肺模拟器来测试这个系统。将进行测试，以确定改进后的呼吸机是否正确地补偿了气管内管的压降，使用不同尺寸的管。该系统还将进行模拟各种临床条件下导致气管内管阻塞的测试。二期后，我们将生产可集成到ICU呼吸机的OEM电路。拟议的商业应用：拟议的气管压力控制器可能成为所有ICU呼吸机的一部分。控制器提供的改进的呼吸机性能将使呼吸机的价值增加约500美元。美国有超过8.8万个重症监护病房，每个都配备了呼吸机。因此，美国市场的总规模为4400万美元。全球市场总额约为1.32亿美元。

Patients in intensive care often need to be mechanically ventilated for long periods of time. Mechanical ventilation is delivered through a cuffed tube placed in the trachea. As gas flows to and from the patient, the pressure drop across this tube causes extra work for the patient and causes distortion in lung pressure measurements. We have developed a system to measure the pressure in the lungs using a standard endotracheal tube. We propose to apply this technology to enhance mechanical ventilators and Improve the information used by physicians. We will build a system to measure the tracheal pressure from the endotracheal tube cuff. A device will be built to modify the pressure observed by a mechanical ventilator. We will test this system using two types of ventilators and a mechanical lung simulator. Testing will be done to determine if the modified ventilator correctly compensates for the pressure drop across the endotracheal tube, using various sizes of tubes. The system will also be tested simulating various clinical conditions resulting in obstructed endotracheal tubes. Following phase II, we will manufacture OEM circuit that can be integrated into ICU ventilators. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: The proposed tracheal pressure controller could potentially become part of all ICU ventilators. The enhanced ventilator performance provided by the controller would add approximately $500 in value to the ventilator. There are over 88,000 Intensive Care Units in the US, each equipped with a ventilator. The total US market is thus $44 million. The total world market is about $132 million.