When patients are treated in a respirator during intensive care, or put in respirators during surgery, there is always a large risk for lung complications to occur. This is especially high risk for smaller children, since the margins for error in ventilation and treatment of complications are much smaller. In the care of neonatal infants, lung complications are always a severe risk due to underdeveloped lungs. For all these patients, a harmless and easy way to monitor lung function and detect any complications, such as a lung collapse, can lead to optimal support and best possible treatment of any problems that occur.
This work focuses on developing a method for monitoring the lung function in patients of all sizes in intensive care. The technique works by sending light from a diode laser into the patient and detecting the free oxygen gas contained inside the lungs. The diode laser lung monitoring technique has been proved to work well for newborn infants, and the current project is investigating what needs to be done to be able to monitor the lung function in children of all ages.
There is no other technology that can perform the type of non-invasive lung monitoring that can be done via diode laser spectroscopy. Currently available methods for diagnosing lung problems, such as X-ray imaging, only provide a single time-point snapshot of the lung and it is well known that repeated X-ray use, especially in the growing child, is associated with an increased risk of cancer. The ability to have a safe way to continuously monitor lung function, and therefore have a rapid detection of problems, would improve the medical management of these patients.
Anna-Lena Sahlberg - portal.research.lu.se
Monitoring lungs using light amplification - portal.research.lu.se