"IRON LUNGS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 195, 18 August 1937, Page 3

"IRON LUNGS."

STILL EXPERIMENTAL. AUTHORITIES' VIEW. RISKS FOR PATIENTS. CBy 1-elegraph.—Special to "Star.") WELLINGTON, this day. Health authorities here declare there is not yet any justification for the importation of a number of "iron lungs" of the type being used in the case of Mr. Frederick B. Snite, iun., who was recently taken from China to Chicago and has lived inside the apparatus for about seventeen months. The survival of Mr. Snite in conditions which would result iu his immediate death if he left the machine for a few minutes has directed attention to the manner in which adults smitten with infantile paralysis can be saved. In these eases it is common for chest muscles and diaphram to be paralysed and thus for the patient to be unable to breathe. What the "iron lung" is doing for Mr. Snite is to inflate and deflate his limps by varying pressures of air and thus continue the breathing he is tillable to do himself. The recent experience of infantile paralysis has led to the suggestion that hospitals should be equipped with "iron lungs" of the Drinker type, similar to that which protects Snite. Professor Drinker, of Harvard University, devised thus apparatus after experimental work ten years ago, and has to-day developed it to the point where there are over 200 "iron lungs" in the United States and Canada, one in Australia, and one in England. It is pointed out by health authorities, however, that the apparatus remains experimental, that it holds risks for the cases put in it. and that it requires a technique of operation which will have to be developed further before it can be accepted as a proved aid to medical practice. One of the major risks of those entering the "iron lung" is pneumonia, which would probably be fatal. There is one "iron lung" in New Zealand at present, not made by Professor Drinker, but built according to his principles, bv Mr. F. C. Jacobs, the Auckland Hospital engineer, who used a pump designed as part of a milking machine. Apart from the treatment of infantile paralysis cases, the machine has many possibilities of use in asphyxiation due to electric shock or noxious gases, provided that patients can be brought to it quickly enough.