As hospitals face an overload of people with COVID-19 struggling to breathe, medical staff are turning to snorkelling masks from sports stores to stop their lungs collapsing.
The idea started in Italy, the European country worst hit by the pandemic, with hospitals in other nations taking note and adding their own specific medical parts to make it work.
One such is the Erasme Hospital on the outskirts of Belgium’s capital, Brussels. It is attached to the city’s ULB university and through it to a private spin-off, Endo Tools Therapeutics, whose knowhow in 3D printing for medical use has proved invaluable.
Photo: AFP
“They are to be used for patients with severe respiratory problems. The aim is to avoid having to intubate the trachea of the patient and put them on a respirator,” said Frederic Bonnier, a respiratory physiotherapist at the hospital who also teaches at the university.
He spearheaded the design of a custom-made valve that fits to the top of full-face masks, where the snorkel is meant to go, allowing them to connect to standard bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) machines that feed pressurized air into masks. This helps prevent the collapse of alveoli, lung air sacs needed for the intake of oxygen into the body and the exhalation of carbon dioxide. Pneumonia brought on by COVID-19 inflames the lung membrane and fills those sacs with liquid.
In the worst-case infections, people have to be hooked up to respirators in intensive-care units.
However, respirators are in desperately short supply worldwide because of the sheer number of patients.
The snorkelling mask solution could be a stop-gap measure for people on the brink of intensive-care treatment, but for whom no beds nor respirators are available. Hospital masks for the less-intensive BiPAP machines are also lacking.
Bonnier said that from yesterday, he was to test 50 of the masks on patients. They are the same brand as those used by Italian doctors, donated by the French sportswear retailer Decathlon. The masks themselves are made in Italy.
They were far more comfortable than the hospital ones that fit over the nose and mouth, biting into the skin, he said.
However, they were not tested to medical standards, meaning they were one-use only, unable to be sterilized between patients.
The Italian design for the 3D-printed valve also needed reworking.
“It seemed fairly complicated to make, pretty heavy, not very comfortable. So we had the idea to go a little further by thinking on it and developing our own connection part,” he said.
The new plastic valve connectors have now been 3D-printed and are ready to be tested.
Bonnier said that health workers in COVID-19 wards could also use the masks for protection against the virus.
However, he fears that the public will start panic-buying them, thereby depriving hospitals of a potentially life-saving product.
Learning of the emergency use being made of its snorkelling masks, Decathlon expressed “interest.”
“At the moment we don’t have confirmation that these solutions really work,” it said on its Twitter account. “If we see successful try-outs, and these hospitals confirm to us that some tests work, then we’ll keep you informed. But in the meantime, beware of unsourced and unverified information spread on social media in recent days.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not