Maintaining an open airway is a critical priority in emergency medicine. Without the flow of oxygen, other emergency interventions can become ineffective at saving the patient’s life. Creating this airway through endotracheal intubation, however, is a difficult task even for highly trained individuals working under the best of circumstances. In the field and in the ER, where seconds matter, emergency medical personnel face many unknowns and wildly challenging condition, which, together, lower their chances of success.
But what if successful endotracheal intubation could be less reliant on ideal conditions and years of specialized training? In a paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineering professor Elliot Hawkes, David Haggerty, who received his PhD in the Hawkes's lab, and other collaborators describe a non-electronic soft robotic device, a specialty of the Hawkes lab, that quickly and autonomously guides a soft tube into the trachea. Initial device testing with highly trained users yielded a 100-percent success rate, and a 96-percent overall success rate with prehospital medical providers (EMTs and paramedics).
“Current intubation tools require extensive anatomical knowledge, training, skill and ideal conditions to be highly successful,” said Haggerty. Current technology calls for the rescuer first to visualize the tracheal opening, then manually direct a tube through the serpentine anatomy of the airway into the trachea. The challenge of this procedure increases in prehospital settings due to various factors including inadequate light and non-ideal body position, in addition to potential injuries and fluid in the airway.
