Undergraduate biomedical engineering students at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University Center for Bioenginnering Innovation and Design created a respiratory device to sustain injured soldiers until they reach a hospital.
The prototype, named CricSpike, creates an artificial airway to pump air into the lungs.
During their research, members of the team discovered that combat medics who attempt a criothyrotomy are unsuccessful nearly a third of the time. In hospital settings, physicians who attempt the same procedure fail about 15 percent of the time, according to the report.
Students found that the tools typically used during the procedure often do not manage to connect to the patient's trachea and are instead lodged just under the patient's skin or strike the patient's esophagus, according to the report.
Their device aims to solve the issue by constructing an improved intratracheal tip that can successfully penetrate the trachea. The students also devised a handle that breaks away once the device is successfully inserted, according to the report.
The device comes with a scalpel, a tube and a bag valve mask.
The team constructed the device with a 3D printer, but plan to use more professional modes of production to mass market the invention.