Preliminary investigation of the mechanics of a novel thoracic cavity extra pulmonary oxygenation device

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) arising from trauma, sepsis, pneumonia or other diseases has been acknowledged to be a major clinical problem in respiratory medicine. Hypoxia and hypercapnia arising from ARDS are life-threating particularly in children and elderly people. The reported mortality rate for ARDS is high. Current methods for treating patients who have limited or no lung function are ineffective or insufficient and present additional risks to the patients. In this research, we have explored new methods of infusing phospholipid-coated oxygen microbubbles (OMBs) to the thoracic cavity in order to oxygenate patients suffering from ARDS and hypoxemia. In our previous work, OMBs have been shown to be effective in treating hypoxia in models of LPS lung injury and lung trauma in rats and rabbits. In this study, we have developed a novel thoracic cavity extrapulmonary oxygenation devices using OMBs and test this device in a benchtop test and in vivo experiment on a large animal (pig) right pneumothorax injury model.