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This Artificial Lung Is Portable

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SOURCES: 2008 Medical Reference from Medstar. Bartley Griffith, MD, Heart & Lung Transplant Surgeon, Univ. of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD.

© 1999-2011 Medstar Television

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Narrator:

24-Year-old Tim McClellan is a survivor. Before getting a double lung transplant, he lived 107 days – nearly twice as long as anyone else – on a lung machine called ecmo. (ECK-moth) It saved his life but he spent four months flat on his back in the hospital

Michele McClellan, Mother:

Basically saying don't move so all of his muscles are gone; he's weaker than a newborn baby.

Narrator:

Doctor Bartley Griffith and his research team hope to change that. They're developing a portable artificial lung patients could use at home.

Bartley Griffith, MD, Heart & Lung Transplant Surgeon, Univ. of Maryland Medical Center:

Something that a patient could in essence walk around with, you know. Not much bigger than a purse, if you wish a CD player size thing.

Narrator:

The device would sit outside the body. Tubes would connect it to the heart and attach it to an oxygen tank.

Bartley Griffith, MD, Heart & Lung Transplant Surgeon, Univ. of Maryland Medical Center:

The oxygen goes here and the blood comes in and out.

Narrator:

It mimics how real lungs work. The blood flows over specially designed hollow fibers, with tiny micropores, carefully wound into bundles. They transfer oxygen into the blood. In the same way, carbon dioxide moves out of the blood into the fibers.

Bartley Griffith, MD, Heart & Lung Transplant Surgeon, Univ. of Maryland Medical Center:

By gently moving the blood around and around within the device, we can do a better job at getting oxygen in and carbon dioxide out in a small, small device.

Narrator:

A portable artificial lung could give damaged lungs time to heal, keep people with failed lungs alive until donor lungs are found or even be an alternative to a lung transplant.

Michele McClellan, Mother:

If they could do that, I mean he could have been home by now.

Bartley Griffith, MD, Heart & Lung Transplant Surgeon, Univ. of Maryland Medical Center:

A welcome change for patients like Tim. For WebMD, I'm Sandee LaMotte.

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