According to one information from Europe 1, a French team from the Marie-Lannelongue Surgical Center, in Hauts-de-Seine, will soon launch into the development of an artificial lung. Unlike the Carmat artificial heart, this lung does not have to be surgically implanted. It will actually be a small machine that sits under the chest and does the job instead of the diseased lung.
This artificial lung will be composed of a battery and an oxygenator, installed in a belt that the patient will wear around the thorax. Everything will be connected to the heart by a small cannula placed in an artery, at the level of the neck.
“The cannula is the only thing that will stay inside the body,” Professor Olaf Mercier, who heads this project at the Marie-Lannelongue surgical center, told Europe 1. “It will penetrate at the base of the neck and will go up to the heart at the level of the right part to take the blood without oxygen and at the level of the left part to restore blood with oxygen”.
Researchers hope to implant their first artificial lung within 5 years. The objective is not to replace the lung transplant but to allow people with severe respiratory failure and who cannot benefit from a transplant because of their fragility, to be able to breathe again.
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