n.

An airtight metal tank that encloses all of the body except the head and forces the lungs to inhale and exhale through regulated changes in air pressure. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/iron-lung#ixzz1hPUh2l00

While iron curtain has a provenance that is clear, the origins of the term iron lung are uncertain. First records of its use surfaced in newspaper articles during the poliomyelitis epidemic of the 1920s, when reference was made to a rigid case fitted over the patient's body, used for administering prolonged artificial respiration by means of a mechanical pump. Yet already in 1670 John Mayow had advanced the concept that negative pressure draws air into the chest, and subsequently John Dalziel, a Scottish physician, described a negative pressure device which augmented respiration in his paper On sleep, and an Apparatus for Promoting Artificial Respiration. The first practical demonstration of the technique was provided by Dr Woillez of Paris, who was awarded the silver medal of the 1876 Le Havre Exhibition of Life Saving Equipment for his hand-operated bellows, the Spirophore. He was to be followed some 40 years later by Dr Stewart in South Africa, who built a wooden box sealed at the shoulders and waist with clay. However, it was not until the polio epidemic of the 1950s that the use of such a device became commonplace. In the 1920s experiments were being made on anaesthetized cats to record the positive pressure changes caused by inspiration in an enclosed chamber around the animal's thorax. The investigator's colleague, Dr Philip Drinker of the Harvard School of Public Health, acutely aware of the clinical problem at the nearby Children's Hospital, of respiratory failure in infantile paralysis, repeated the experiment with cats paralysed with curare. He found that animal could be ventilated and kept alive by the suction action of a syringe attached to the box enclosing the animal's body. Drinker sought and obtained funding from the Consolidated Gas Company of New York (who had previously sponsored a committee chaired by Drinker, which reported on improved methods of resuscitation in cases of gaseous poisoning), and with Louis Shaw he built a wooden cabinet, which opened and shut like a drawer, to contain the human torso. In 1926 his first iron lung (perhaps named for the iron of the pump) was left at the bedside of an eight-year-old girl affected with respiratory paralysis due to polio. As she deteriorated she was placed in the cabinet, but the staff, unfamiliar with the device, feared to turn on the pump, which was left to Drinker himself. Within minutes the moribund young girl was revived, only to die soon after of pneumonia. Thus it had been established that artificial respiration could maintain life, but little was known of the natural history of such respiratory paralysis. Would this mean the prospect of an entire lifetime in an iron lung? Although this was the case for some, the second patient to be treated, at the adjoining Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, recovered respiratory muscle function, and the era of life-support was begun. In the 1930s, Drinkers as they also became known, were found throughout the US; in the UK a cheaper alternative, designed by Both, an Australian, was also available, being paid for by the motor car manufacturer and philanthropist Lord Nuffield. By 1937, 965 of these were to be found throughout the UK and elsewhere. Improved access for patients was achieved with a hinged opening of the tank, like the jaws of an alligator (or Alligator tank) this time by Captain Smith-Clarke of the Alvis Motor Car Company. Cape Engineering company produced aluminum versions, of which 150 were sold between 1954 and 1967. An additional modification was introduced in 1961 by Dr W. Howlett Kelleher of the Artificial Respiration Unit at the, Western Hospital, Fulham. This was a rotating version of the Iron Lung, which permitted chest physiotherapy in all positions. The non-invasive application of positive pressure through nose masks has largely superceded the iron lung in the treatment of respiratory failure, but the final chapter in the story of the iron lung is still to be written. In the UK a few patients remain ventilated for part or all of the day using the iron lung, and it is still used by some in the short term for people with acute exacerbations of chronic airways obstruction.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/iron-lung#ixzz1hPUnNK14

iron lung, device used to maintain artificial respiration over an extended period of time. Before the successful
vaccination program against poliomyelitis, it was used mostly in treatment of that disease. Currently, its main usage is in cases where the respiration control center of the brain has been damaged (e.g. skull fractures, brain tumors and stroke) or where the diaphragm is paralyzed by spinal cord disease or injury. Invented (1928) by Philip Drinker, the iron lung is composed of a cylindrical steel drum, which encloses the entire body with only the head exposed. A rubber diaphragm makes the cylinder airtight without putting undue pressure on the neck. Pumps raise and lower the pressure within the chamber. A number of problems exist with the iron lung machine; food or vomit may be aspirated into the lungs, and serious skin ulcers may develop in a patient who is immobilized for long periods of time. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/iron-lung#ixzz1hPUr4FLX

A negative pressure ventilator (often referred to colloquially as an iron lung) is a form of medical ventilator that enables a person to breathe when normal muscle control has been lost or the work of breathing exceeds the person's ability.

Contents y y y y y y y 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Method and use Invention and early use Modern usage See also References Further reading External links

Method and use

Humans, like most other animals, breathe by negative pressure breathing:[1] the rib cage expands and the diaphragm contracts, expanding the chest cavity. This causes the pressure in the chest cavity to decrease, and the lungs expand to fill the space. This, in turn, causes the pressure of the air inside the lungs to decrease (it becomes negative, relative to the atmosphere), and air flows into the lungs from the atmosphere: inhalation. When the diaphragm relaxes, the reverse happens and the person exhales. If a person loses part or all of the ability to control the muscles involved, breathing becomes difficult or impossible.

Negative pressure ventilator

Intervention

NO IMAGE

An Emerson iron lung. The patient lies within the chamber, which when sealed provides an effectively oscillating atmospheric pressure. This particular machine was donated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Museum by the family of poliomyelitis patient Barton Hebert of Covington, Louisiana, who had used the device from the late 1950s until his death in 2003. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/iron-lung#ixzz1hPW7mHBD

NO IMAGE
Iron lung ward filled with polio patients,Rancho Los Amigos Hospital, California (1953)

The person using the iron lung is placed into the central chamber, a cylindrical steel drum. A door allowing the head and neck to remain free is then closed, forming a sealed, air-tight compartment enclosing the rest of the person's body. Pumps that control airflow periodically decrease and increase the air pressure within the chamber, and particularly, on the chest. When the pressure is below that within the lungs, the lungs expand and atmospheric pressure pushes air from outside the chamber in via the person's nose and airways to keep the lungs filled; when the pressure goes above that within the lungs, the reverse occurs, and air is expelled. In this manner, the iron lung mimics the physiological action of breathing: by periodically altering intrathoracic pressure, it causes air to flow in and out of the lungs. The iron lung is a form of non-invasive therapy.

Invention and early use

NO IMAGE
Staff in a Rhode Island hospital are examining a patient in an iron lung tank respirator during the 1960 polio epidemic. The iron lung encased the thoracic cavity in an air-tight chamber. The chamber was used to create a negative pressure around the thoracic cavity, thereby causing air to enter the lungs to equalize intrapulmonary pressure.

The first negative pressure ventilator was described by Scottish physician John Dalziel in 1832. Successful use of similar devices was described a few years later. The first of these devices to be widely used however was developed by Drinker and Shaw in 1928.[2] The iron lung, often referred to in the early days as the "Drinker respirator", was invented by Phillip Drinker (1894 1972) and Louis Agassiz Shaw Junior, professors of industrial hygiene at the Harvard School of Public Health.[3][4][5][6] The machine was powered by an electric motor with air pumps from two vacuum cleaners. The air pumps changed the pressure inside a rectangular, airtight metal box, pulling air in and out of the lungs.[7] The first clinical use of the Drinker respirator on a human was on October 12, 1928 at the Children's Hospital in Boston.[4][8] The subject was an eight-year-old girl who was nearly dead as a result of respiratory failure due to poliomyelitis (often called polio or infantile paralysis).[6] Her dramatic recovery, within less than a minute of being placed in the chamber, helped popularize the new device.[5] Boston manufacturer Warren E. Collins began production of the iron lung that year.[9][10] Although it was initially developed for the treatment of victims of coal gas poisoning, it was most famously used in the mid-20th century for the treatment of respiratory failure caused by poliomyelitis.[3] In 1931, John Haven Emerson (February 5, 1906 February 4, 1997) introduced an improved and less expensive iron lung.[11][12] The Emerson iron lung had a bed that could slide in and out of the cylinder as needed, and the tank had portal windows which allowed attendants to reach in and adjust limbs, sheets, or hot packs.[7] Drinker and Harvard University sued Emerson, claiming he had infringed on patent rights. Emerson defended himself by making the case that such lifesaving devices should be freely available to all.[7] Emerson also demonstrated that every aspect of

Drinker's patents had been patented by others at earlier times. Emerson won the case, and Drinker's patents were declared invalid.

Modern usage
Rows of irons lungs filled hospital wards at the height of the polio outbreaks of the 1940s and 1950s. Polio vaccination programs have virtually eradicated new cases of poliomyelitis in the United States. Because of this, and also the development of modern ventilators and widespread use of tracheal intubation andtracheotomy, the iron lung has virtually disappeared from modern medicine. For example, in 1959, there were 1,200 people using tank respirators in the United States, but by 2004 there were only 39.[7] Positive pressure ventilation systems are now more common than negative pressure systems. Positive pressure ventilators work by blowing air into the patient's lungs via intubation through the airway; they were used for the first time in Blegdams Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark during a polio outbreak in 1952.[13][14]It proved a success and soon superseded the iron lung throughout Europe. The iron lung now has a marginal place in modern respiratory therapy. Most patients with paralysis of the breathing muscles use modern mechanical ventilators that push air into the airway with positive pressure. These are generally efficacious and have the advantage of not restricting patients' movements or caregivers' ability to examine the patients as significantly as an iron lung does. However, negative pressure ventilation is a truer approximation of normal physiological breathing and results in more normal distribution of air in the lungs. It may also be preferable in certain rare conditions, such as Ondine's curse, in which failure of the medullary respiratory centers at the base of the brain result in patients having no autonomic control of breathing. At least one reported polio patient, Dianne Odell, had a spinal deformity that caused the use of mechanical ventilators to be contraindicated.[15] There are patients who today still use the older machines, often in their homes, despite the occasional difficulty of finding the various replacement parts. Joan Headley of Post-Polio Health International stated to CNN that there are approximately 30 patients in the USA still using an iron lung.[16] That figure may be inaccurately low; Houston alone had 19 iron lung patients living at home in 2008.[17] Martha Mason of Lattimore, North Carolina died on May 4, 2009, after spending 60 of her 72 years in an iron lung.[18] On the 30th of October 2009, June Middleton of Melbourne, Australia, who had been entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the person who spent the longest time in an iron lung, died aged 83, having spent more than 60 years in her iron lung.[19] Biphasic Cuirass Ventilation is a modern development of the iron lung, consisting of a wearable rigid upper-body shell (a cuirass) which functions as a negative pressure ventilator.

When people imagine an "iron lung", it is always in black and white. They imagine old photos showing rows of machines enclosing patients ravaged by polio in 1950s wards - old-style technology tackling diseases rarely seen in this country today. So it is a surprise to walk into a modern NHS hospital and find what is essentially a working antique keeping a patient alive. John Prestwich's iron lung is a pleasant shade of cream and pastel green, and it can be found in St Thomas' Hospital on the banks of the Thames in London. It remains a shocking sight - a cylinder the length of a family car, and probably weighing twice as much, with a seemingly disembodied human head emerging from one end.

It interrupts its quiet surroundings with a regular whoosh as an oversized bellows contraption at the rear pulls the air in and out of the casing. Moving a little closer and peering through tiny submarine-style windows, you can see John's chest gently rise and fall in time. John, paralysed from the chin down, is 64 - and holds the dubious distinction of being the longest surviving beneficiary of iron lung technology. He has not taken a breath for himself since he was struck down with polio at the age of 17. To him, the sound of the rising and falling bellows is the drumbeat of his life. "This machine is like a comfortable friend, not a prison," he told BBC News Online. "When you live with a noise like that all the time, you don't notice it at all. What is deafening is silence - if it stops working."

The lung pulls air in and out of the lungs

If this machine were to fail, without the assistance of the dedicated staff in the ward, he could be dead within three minutes. To be fair, although John has needed artificial breathing for the past 48 years - and spent a decade-and-a-half encased in an iron lung during the 1950s and 1960s - this is not his daily routine. Modern technology has replaced this two-tonne monster with a chest-sized device shaped like a turtle-shell, and which does almost exactly the same thing, in the Hertfordshire home he shares with his wife Maggie. However, this week, John has come down with a chest infection, and, since he cannot cough, must come into St Thomas' to spend a few days in the full-sized version while nurses pummel his chest to loosen the phlegm. "It's no exaggeration to say that this unit, and the wonderful care I get here, has saved my life on many occasions," he said. Polio pain The idea behind the artificial lung is gloriously simple. The typical patient cannot use his or her breathing muscles to inflate the lungs, but if a way could be found to draw up the chest, it would create a space in the lungs that would automatically be filled by air flowing in through the mouth and nose.
First tested on humans in 1928 by American Philip Drinker By 1939, there were almost 1,000 in use in the UK Many patients paralysed by polio first vaccine introduced in 1954
75 years of the iron lung

Once a patient is enclosed by the machine, a perfect seal is created. When the air is pumped out of the casing, the reduction in pressure makes the chest rise, filling the lungs. When the air is allowed back in, the lungs empty. The iron lung is forever linked in the mind with the devastating disease polio, and this is exactly how John became paralysed in 1955. Polio attacks the nerves controlling the muscles, resulting in varying degrees of weakness, then paralysis.
This machine is decades old

Some are relatively lucky - they get away with impaired movement in an arm or a leg - but others, like John, are less fortunate. The daily hard physical labour involved in his job as a deckhand on a merchant navy vessel meant that virtually all his muscles were affected. He woke up one evening and found he could not lift his face off his cabin pillow - which in itself, was nearly the end of him. Medics resorted to desperate measures to save the life of the teenager as he headed for hospital.
This machine is like a comfortable friend, not a prison John Prestwich

"When I was taken off the boat, my breathing almost stopped completely. "They had me laid on the stretcher, and were rocking me backwards and forwards, which moved air in and out of my lungs." "When I woke up, I was a 17-year-old, surrounded by people I didn't know, I couldn't speak, there was something in front of me and this swishing noise. "I never realised then that this noise would be with me every minute of every day for the next 48 years." Many would have given up hope at this point, but perhaps one of the secrets of John's survival was his determination not to be bettered by his condition. "The only thing I regret is that, when I was 18, I didn't go and put a bet on me going to get my old age pension - I could have got great odds on that. "I have always considered my disability to be my enemy, and I have fought the restrictions it placed upon me." This took the form of making the effort to get out of hospital every now and again - a risky business for someone so dependent on machinery.

On one trip out, he found himself in deep trouble - and miles from the safety of the ward and his iron lung. "The trouble was there was so little equipment back then. If I left the hospital, I had to be 'hand-pumped' with this little set of bellows. "On one occasion, the person doing this expanded the bellows too far and they broke. That was certainly a hairy moment. "He pulled the rubber back over the box and we got the driver to get back to the hospital at top speed." Life transformed On other occasions his absent minded companions would be a problem. "We used to go to the cinema - but if the film got a bit exciting my breathing tended to go to cock!" It is the last decade and the increase in computing power that has transformed his life. His home is now fully automated, with a computer which can respond to his whistled commands. "When this first happened, I couldn't even ring the alarm bell - but now I can send a fax to America." Some things, though, are likely to remain beyond him. "I'm due for my free bus pass in a couple of weeks," he says. "Can't see me using it much."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3182096.stm

It is one of the oldest life saving machine.

One of the earliest life-saving machines has been the iron-lung machine.It was invented by one Philip drinker of Harvard,U.S.A in 1929.This device is meant to aid who have difficulty in breathing ,either due to paralysis of chest muscles or due to some disease or some an accident .It has an air tight chamber to enclose the patients body It helps in breathing alternately reducing and increasing the air pressure around the patients body.When the pressure is reduced,his chest expands and air streams into his lungs through the normal air passages,as his head remains outside the machine.When

the pressure is increased ,the chest contracts and air is automatically expelled from the lungs. This machine has an tight chamber on wheels.The patient lies on a form rubber bed with an adjustable head and foot rests.It is operated by electricity but has a safety device which gives a warning signal in the case of power failure .The machine can then be operated by hand. The machine has a cover which can be opened to give access to the patient .The patients head is usually enclosed in a plastic dome in which the air pressure is raised alternately raised and lowered to enable the breathing to continue . During heart operation a heart-lung machine is often used.This takes over the function of the heart and lungs and the surgeon can perform surgery safely.

http://healthmad.com/conditions-and-diseases/what-is-iron-lung-machine/

GOOD IMAGES HERE!!