35. An Automated Breathing Device for Critically Ill Patients

In this paper the project titled an automated breathing device for critically ill patients has been discussed. Ambu bag (AB) is a flexible reservoir bag used for artificial ventilation connected by tubing and non-rebreathing valve to a face mask or endo-tracheal tube. It is a hand held device used to provide positive pressure ventilation to a patient who is not breathing or who is breathing inadequately [1]. In ambulances and in emergency wards of hospitals manually operated ambu bag is used. Bagging is necessarily regular in medical emergencies when the patient’s breathing is insufficient or has ceased completely and also to provide mechanical ventilation in preference to mouth to mouth resuscitation. The problems involved in this type of manual ambu bag is that sometimes due to the negligence of the caretakers required quantity of oxygen is not carried over to the lungs, secondly even if the caretakers are alert one cannot assure that they expel a constant quantity of oxygen into the patient’s lungs, thirdly this type of mechanism basically is a stress to the caretakers. To overcome this, an automatic mechanism for administering oxygen into the patient’s body has been developed and tested successfully. This automated ambu bag is economically cheap and gives much comfort to the care takers and the required amount of oxygen can be delivered appropriately according to the need of the patient.