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Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Liquid Ventilation
CWall@swri.edu wrote:
> Yeah, and artificial "lungs" - or rather, "gills" have been built using
> membrane gas separation technology....but that still leaves gas-filled spaces
> in the human body that are subject to "squeeze". IOWs, you probably still want
> to flood the lungs of a diver.
>
> I do know that adult humans have "breathed" using this perfusion technique, but
> they only had one lung flooded- they just lay on their side and ran tubes down
> their throats- not very comfortable, I'm guessing. Then, of course, there's
> that pesky tendency to try to breathe anyway, which is why you'd need a curare
> drip to suppress reflexive movements of the diaphragm. (Obviously they didn't
> administer this to the human experimental patients- I'm not sure if they did
> for the premie baboons.)
>
> Have you ever inhaled a solid slug of water? I have, a couple of times. Gawd
> what a shock!
> I think I'd need to be knocked out before the transition- otherwise I don't
> think I could help but fight it. (Although it's mostly psychological, like a
> fear of falling....I suppose if you can jump out of airplanes, you could get
> used to intentional drowning.....)
>
> Plumbing another organ into the human body, as you suggest, brings us closer to
> cyborg status and I do know that animal research has just begun to broach this
> topic- but the opportunity for infection is very high, naturally, and I think
> it'll be awhile before that would be used for anything other than desperate
> situations. But I'm sure it'll happen eventually- I mean, we have precedent
> now, with peritoneal dialysis, for instance. In fact, you could probably
> combine the two. But It's like walking a tightrope three times a day for
> those people, and eventually they get infected and lose patency. Doing
> aseptic plumbing in a wet environment is the stuff of nightmares- we'd have to
> get to a technology that could interface the artifical components in a manner
> that was compatible with a working immune system- flesh and steel just don't
> grow together naturally.
>
> Craig Wall
> ---------- Original Text ----------
>
> From: "Nathanael Henderson" <jude@pconline.com>, on 11/29/00 8:52 PM:
> To: Incognito2@CTC@SwRI26[<personal_submersibles@psubs.org>]
>
> > Under pressure, things get better. It may be possible for deep divers to
> > use something like this....but the transition on and off seem likely to be,
> > well....problematic.
>
> I just about gagged when they 'drown' the hard hat diver in "The
> Abyss" in the liquid breathing medium. It would take a determined person
> to go through that concious, although perhaps the sensation wouldn't be
> all that bad once the novelty wore off. :-)
>
> > Who knows? It bears watching, but IMHO- don't get your hopes up.
>
> It sounds like a lot of obstacles to overcome...for an off-the-shelf
> human. :-) Perhaps some sort of synthetic lung...a bypass machine?
> Replace the lungs with something more structurally suited to fluid/fluid
> gas exchange and feed that with oxygenated and CO2 scrubbed fluid from an
> external pack.... OK, that's pretty radical to go diving...but can you
> imagine a casual dive without a sub to, say, 3,000 feet, then coming back
> without decompression? I wouldn't be surprised if you found some
> saturation divers that were game...but of course, they're insane to begin
> with. :-)