How to share a ventillator in times of shortages

In his podcast Dilbert discussed the ventillator shortage, and one of his commenters noted that ventillators could be shared in times of emergency:

not only was this done in animal models, but some smart ER docs actually did this after the Las Vegas shooting:

From EPMontly:

Around that time the respiratory therapist, said, “Menes, we don’t have any more ventilators.” I said, “It’s fine,” and requested some Y tubing. Dr. Greg Neyman, a resident a year ahead of me in residency, had done a study on the use of ventilators in a mass casualty situation. What he came up with was that if you have two people who are roughly the same size and tidal volume, you can just double the tidal volume and stick them on Y tubing on one ventilator.

of course, in pneumonia patients, it's a little more complicated (stiff lungs, sharing germs) but you get the idea.

So five minutes ago, one doc posted this video about this, and will post follow up videos and information.



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