The iron lung is a large horizontal cylinder designed to stimulate breathing in patients who have lost control of their respiratory muscles. The patient's head is exposed outside the cylinder, while the body is sealed inside.

2023年8月10日 · As intimidating as the name sounds — and as scary as the coffin-like device looked — the iron lung was a medical miracle for people suffering from something even scarier: poliomyelitis.

2024年3月24日 · After an emergency tracheostomy operation, he was unable to breathe without the iron lung machine that now encased his small body. When he died recently at the age of 78, Paul had spent more than...

2021年10月25日 · Iron lung respirators are prepared in an emergency polio ward at a Boston hospital in August 1955. The machines are giant ventilators about 7 feet long. Patients lie inside with just their...

2018年10月14日 · The coffin-like cabinet respirator—better known as the 'iron lung'—was the state-of-the-art in life support technology in the first half of the 20th century. The first iron lung was used at Boston Children's Hospital to save the life of an eight-year-old girl with polio in 1928.

2024年12月18日 · iron lung, mechanical medical device, sufficiently large to enclose most of an individual’s body, used to maintain respiration in persons who are unable to breathe on their own.

2023年11月15日 · The iron lung is a mechanical negative pressure ventilator (NPV) that polio sufferers historically relied on, which served as the forerunner of today’s sophisticated mechanical respiration devices. The iron lungs are used to aid breathing in cases where muscular control is impaired, such as in polio, botulism, or poisoning.

2024年3月15日 · However, with the iron lung, a massive machine that encases patients and provides air pressure to help the impacted individual's paralysed lungs function, life could continue for years. Such...

2016年7月31日 · During the polio epidemics, the iron lung saved many thousands of lives, but the machine was large, cumbersome, and very expensive: in the 1930s, an iron lung cost about $1,500—about the same price as the average home.

An iron lung mimicks the way the respiratory system works to stimulate breathing of the patient, who lays inside an airtight bedchamber of the machine up to their neck.