Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Important Functions Of The Oxygen Membrane

By Ruthie Calderon


Medical operations, especially heart bypass, are very sensitive and can mean a person's life or death. Many equipment are used to ensure the success of a procedure and one of those is the oxygen membrane. Membrane oxygenators are devices used to artificially put in oxygen into the blood and extract carbon dioxide without the need for the patient's lung

These membranes imitate breathing during cardiopulmonary bypasses, among other operations. They put oxygen into the blood and remove carbon dioxide, which is essential to life. The gas-giving stage is called extracoporeal membrane oxygenation.

The apparatus contains a delicate, penetrable layer through which blood and gas flow independently. In a circuit, oxygen is dispelled and goes into the blood. While the blood ejects carbon dioxide.

In the mid 1880s, the first artificial lung was a rotating disk oxygenator where blood was simply exposed to the oxygen in the atmosphere. This posed the danger of blood clotting and foaming. Once blood becomes this state, it cannot be brought back to the patient's arteries for we will die.

Research continued for many years which included animal testing. The premium new design in 1953 was used for a successful pulmonary bypass. Here a thin film of blood was allowed to access this gas as it passed through steel layers.

From the 1950s to 1980s, disposable bubble oxygenators were commonly used in the majority of hospitals. Those that were not disposable were very hard to keep clean. Many times demand for these devices was so high that the staff had to clean it very quickly and well for the next patient in a very short space of time.

This is most especially true in the United States. It is at par with the other types of oxygenators in terms of oxygenating liters of blood. However, it is more favored because it only needs a smaller volume of blood for preparation or for the device to function with the sufficient rate of gas transfer. Because of this, there was less blood trauma. It functions closer or most similar to the natural lung.

Membrane oxygenators were initially made out of polyethylene or Teflon, neither of which are penetrable. Advances were made and silicone rubber membranes started to be used. This provided major improvements in the quality of patients' blood.

Nowadays hollow fiber membranes with fine pores tend to be used in short cardiopulmonary operations. But for longer operations, membranes without pores are used. Pores control the length of time the blood is exposed to oxygen. This has to be watched in order to make the patient's body processes as it should be after the operation.

There is still a continuing research on the probability of bubble oxygenators having more benefits than the membrane ones especially for adult patients. Cost wise, there are almost at par with each other because of clinical and technological advancement. In most developed nations, membrane oxygenators still remains king during CBP operations.




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