Professor invents artificial lung

Press, 26 November 1982, Page 13

Professor invents artificial lung

NZPA-Reuter Providence, Rhode Is. A plastic bag crammed with fine teflon tubing is the latest invention of a Brown University Medical School professor who calls himself the “spare parts,” man. •The bag is an artificial lung.

Dr . Pierre Galletti, Brown’s vice-president for biology and medicine, is one of the world’s most eminent researchers in the field of artificial organs. He is also working on an artificial pancreas, and artificial blood vessel, and an artificial liver.

The plastic bag is Dr Galleti’s latest effort at making an artificial lung, a problem he started working on 25 years ago. Six times in recent months, he has split the chests of pigs and sheep and inserted his plastic bags. Each test told him a little more about how the bag should be attached to the blood vessels and how the tangled mass of tubing should be designed.

Within the next two months Dr Galletti will perform the most crucial test yet. He will open the chest of a sheep, remove a lung, and attach the artificial one to

the major blood vessels that run to and from the heart.

The sheep's heart will pump blood through the tubing. If all goes well the artifical lung .will accept carbon dioxide from the sheep’s blood and replace it with oxygen. This is a task that the natural lung performs with • millions of microscopic air sacks and thousands of metres of blood vessels.

The survival of the sheep and rejection of the artificial organ by the sheep's body were not important at this stage of the testing, Dr Galletti said.

“We are only concerned with monitoring the sheep for a few hours to measure how much oxygen transfer capacity we can get,” he said.

If this test, is successful, he hopes to look for a solution to the rejection problem in tests a few months later. His plan is to line the sheep’s chest cavity with some of its own skin before implanting the artificial lung. He explained that skin is the one part of the body that is accustomed to contact with foreign objects.

Human tests are at least 10 years off, and that is only

if everything goes well. Di Galletti’ said.

Eventually articial lungs will, be used to replace diseased human lungs or boost them. However, the practical use of artificial lungs would not take place in this century, he said. The Swiss-born physician said that whenever his research was publicised he was besieged by lung patients who wanted to know if his work would be completed in time to help them. “All you can say is ‘sorry, it’s not going to be helpful to you,’ ” Dr Galletti said. Artificial organ research was “like building a cathedral. It’s one stone and another stone and so on,” he said.

Many of the great cathedrals of Europe took so long to build that they are the work of several generations. As with those who laid the foundations of cathedrals, Dr Galletti, who is 55, said he might not live to see his work finished, and that was why his students were so important to him. “You need to get younger people involved because eventually they are going to make the next step,” he said. “No one person is going to do it all.”