People who have severe breathing difficulties, or neuromuscular diseases like Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), must rely on surgically inserted breathing tubes for ventilation. The tubes can be bulky and impact their quality of life.
But engineers at MIT whose research was recently published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, hope to change this by creating a soft ventilator that experts can implant directly into someone’s chest. When tested in pigs, it tripled the amount of air inhaled.
“There are a lot of muscular degenerative diseases where the diaphragm will fail,” resulting in a need for long-term ventilation, says biomedical engineer Ellen Roche who led the work. Roche has previously developed a device that helps weakened hearts pump blood, and so she thought, “maybe we can assist the diaphragm like we have with the heart.”
