Lung delivery
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The world’s first drone delivery of lungs has gone down in history as a success. Unither Bioélectronique, a bioengineering firm focused on organ transportation, recently completed a “proof-of-concept” flight in which a pair of human lungs were shipped via drone to the transplant site in about six minutes.
The lungs were flown from the Toronto Western Hospital to Toronto General Hospital, where Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, surgeon-in-chief of Canada’s University Health Network, received the cargo at about 1 a.m. He needed the lungs for a transplant he was performing that very day on a male engineer who’d soon become the first transplant patient to receive his “new” lungs by drone.Though the circumstances of the trip were urgent, the trip itself was 18 months in the making. Organs have been shipped by drone before, but lungs are particularly sensitive to environmental shifts during transport, with a majority of donated lungs rendered unusable by insufficient oxygenation. In order to make the trip worthwhile, engineers at Unither Bioélectronique had to design a lightweight carbon fiber shipping container that could withstand vibrations and in-flight changes in elevation and barometric pressure. Preparation involved practice flights and drop tests using simulation lung packages. The drone and its container counterpart were fitted with a parachute and an advanced GPS system, as the drone would fly through the air unmanned.
"Proof of concept," indeed. It's a 7 minute drive by car, 10 minutes by bicycle.
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Saw that, it was posted on all the lung transplant groups.
Not sure how relevant it is in the US. Here, the center doing the transplant sends an extraction team to the hospital where the donor is. They go there and back by plane or helicopter as it is.
Maybe in countries with centralized medical systems the local hospital does the extraction. Then it could make sense to look at transport as a discrete problem to be solved.
When you shake someone's deep sense of self-worth, leaving a scar in their ego, they will persistently try to diminish you through petty arguments & obsessive captious criticism of your actions, just to soothe the wound.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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If I were the recipient this would make me very very nervous. Statistically there may be no justification for it, but it's much more reassuring to know there is someone there who can respond to unforeseen events.
Especially if I were the
guinea pigfirst one. -
@jon-nyc said in Lung delivery:
Not sure how relevant it is in the US. Here, the center doing the transplant sends an extraction team to the hospital where the donor is. They go there and back by plane or helicopter as it is.
Maybe in countries with centralized medical systems the local hospital does the extraction. Then it could make sense to look at transport as a discrete problem to be solved.When I did them, we called them "harvests" rather than extraction. And yeah, the team came to us, and left with the organs in hand (well, not literally in hand....).
@Mik , if I were the team, I would not have let the recipient know, LOL.
I'm not sure, other than proof of concept, they were trying to show, especially in a city like Toronto. I doubt they would trust a drone to fly a precious commodity like that cross-country.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in Lung delivery:
I'm not sure, other than proof of concept, they were trying to show, especially in a city like Toronto. I doubt they would trust a drone to fly a precious commodity like that cross-country.
Exactly. They saved one minute. And risked losing an incredibly precious and scarce asset.
