Who needs REAL lungs?

I'm glad they saved this guy's life. It took 200 pints of blood and cost God knows how much. For one person. I'm sure his family is as thankful as is he.

LANDSTUHL, Germany — A team of doctors and nurses from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center used a revolutionary device during a recent medevac mission to save the life of a British soldier wounded in Afghanistan.

It would seem to me that this device, the "Novalung' could, in theory, eliminate the need for a human being to breathe. It creeps me out and lights up my eyes at the same time. Can you imagine walking around with something that looks like an oil cooler strapped to your back? Or swimming without SCUBA gear? It's just weird.

The 19-year-old soldier, whose name was not released, lost his right lung and suffered a damaged liver when he was shot July 25 near Camp Bastion, a British base in Helmand province. Within hours of getting the call, the LRMC Lung Rescue Team was bound for Afghanistan.

It took more than 200 pints of blood — and the use of a German-made device called the Novalung — to keep the soldier alive.

The Novalung works like a temporary lung by filtering out carbon dioxide from a patient’s blood and oxygenating it. To use the device, a physician reroutes blood flow from a patient’s major vessels through the box by tapping the femoral artery and vein in the upper thighs. As blood flows from one leg into the box, it passes through a filter that leeches off the carbon dioxide and infuses the cells with oxygen, mimicking the trade-off that should take place in the lungs. The blood then goes back into the system through the other leg, refreshed.

The Novalung is unlike other equipment or treatment used by the Lung Rescue Team because it has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Each time the team uses the device, it has to report it to the FDA.

Novalung is in the process of getting FDA approval.

“We are preparing for clinical trials to get it approved in the United States,” said Nicholas Strout, Novalung’s global vice president of sales and marketing. “It will confirm that this is safe and effective. The trials will probably start early next year and could take six to 12 months.”

Strout said he was on his way to the U.S. on Wednesday to meet with a company that conducts clinical trials. Novalungs have been used more than 5,000 times safely, he said.

Link to Source

Edit to add the source link. Sorry guys.

[edit on 20-8-2009 by KSPigpen]

reply to post by KSPigpen


Friggen ae! Transhumanism for the win!

Can I get a link to this news source?

Does this mean people can stop trying to quit smoking?

Rather than grow old and wheel around a little oxygen tank cause of your COPD you can get a Novalung backpack and just puff puff puff.

If they make it small enough and fast enough you can have athletes using machines to boost their O2 Max. No more steroids. It's all about the cyborgs.

A read a book some twenty years ago called 'Desolation Road' It was about a frontier colony on Mars and the struggles and discrimination between those that had modifications and mechanical enhancemennts and those that were 'pure.' This book had a profound effect on me. I can't help but see articles like this and think how much closer we are getting to a human brain inside a mechanical body. Bring it.

reply to post by KSPigpen


If you've ever played Deus Ex: Invisable War, that sense of discrimination was a major them (the game also had like 8 endings so was well worth playing).

But I see that inevitable. Man will alter itself but to different degrees and the amounts and nature of the alterations will pretty much determine the new species that man produces and the caste system that will emerge.

Oh, the countless hours I've spent discussing and pondering about this stuff.



Good times to be alive.

What an incredible invention. As computers and other components get smaller and smaller were gonna see allot more devices like this one. The cyborg era is coming. I mean I would love to have robotic eyes and ears and stuff.

Sorry for the little off-topic, but.. This device was designed on Germany, where there is a National Health Care Service.. in fact the oldest on the world.

Here goes out the window the theory that NHS shuts down innovation on the medical field, because of the lack of competition