Curiousity Question. Did those people....

[KFCA]

who ended up in "Iron Lungs" as a result of polio up until the 1950ties ever get to leave them? What was its purpose? I remember seeing photos of dozens of Iron Lungs lined up in newspapers/magazines of that era. In fact my high school's Athletic Director had two kids in IL's circa 1953; I have no idea of their eventual outcomes.

[flume]

The poet Mark O'Brien never did.
http://www.pacificnews.org/marko/obrien-obituary.html

[geni]

Most did after the accute stage of the illness. Their muscle action normaly recoved after that.

[materia3]

A lot of people who wound up in iron lungs to help them breathe also died in them and never got to leave them. Some, who survived into the early 60s, when external positive pressure ventilators were commercially made available, were able to leave these torture chambers. They continued to be mechanically ventilated but by small, external devices. Their bodies were freed from total confinement, and they could get around in wheel chairs with a hose attached to a tracheosomy (like the late Christoper Reeve).

These devices were developed during WW II but were a not so well kept secret by the military medical establishment. It wasn't until 15 years or so after the end of the second world war that they were commdrcialized in the U.S. Sweden, Germany and Great Britain also had developed similar devices which were seeing use overseas more rapidly than in the U.S.

The purpose of the Iron Lung, invented by Philip Drinker and Shaw back in the 1927 and soon refined and commercialized by Collins was to create a difference in air pressure between the head/mouth (which was at atmospheric pressure outside the device) and the chest cavity (thorax) and abdominal cavity which was inside the device. The pressure around the thorax was made negative due to the vacuum created by a piston like device, causing the air at the mouth to become positive in relation to it. This resulted in the inward flow of air. There are actually historical drawings and descriptions of such a device going back to the 1670s. In the absence of electricity such devices required human power to operate and did not become very popular.

The device then cycled, raising the inside tank pressure to ambient, causing the air thus inhaled to be expelled, It was an ingenious (at the time) way to provide breathing (ventilation) for people with polio and other neuromuscular diseases which paralyzed their breathing. Since the 60s we have much less intrusive and cumbersome devices that do the same thing.
The pioneers of the positive pressure ventilator (as opposed to Drinker's negative pressure ventilator) were Forest M. Bird
and Ray Bennett in the U.S.

In Germany Mueller and Morch and Dragerworkes developed such a device and in Sweden Engstrom did so. Siemens (Sweden) came along with a device also as did any number of British inventors and their companies.

Some people did come off the ventilators as a result of physical therapy and teaching them to "frog breathe" but success depended on the severity of their disease.

[Capsid]

This man (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3182096.stm) still has to return to his iron lung occasionally.

Modern technology has replaced this two-tonne monster with a chest-sized device shaped like a turtle-shell, and which does almost exactly the same thing, in the Hertfordshire home he shares with his wife Maggie.

However, this week, John has come down with a chest infection, and, since he cannot cough, must come into St Thomas' to spend a few days in the full-sized version while nurses pummel his chest to loosen the phlegm.

[materia3]

The turtle shell mentioned above is a smaller lighter version of NPV or negative pressure ventilation. It is also called a curiass,
not unlike the chest plates of an ancient suit of armor.

It is about just as archaic as is the iron lung itself. But yeah, you can't get chest phystical therapy through the thing. Y

ou can be completely freed of any of these encumberances with a positive pressure ventilator and get all the chest P/T you need.

This man may be one of the last people on earth with an attachment to these archaic devices and I guess he should ask himself why. He should know that today he can be completely mobile, connected to a small computerized positive pressure ventilator. He doesn't even need a tracheostomy for this as there are two machine/human inter-faces available now which do away with trachs: either the nasal or oronasal mask or a large nasal cannula device called nasal air.

[Rolfe]

In one of the Dick Francis mystery books, the hero's wife is confined to a "Spirashell" (the curiass thingie) as a result of polio contracted abroad. THe book was late 60s or early 70s I think.


I understood that quite a lot of polio victims did recover enough to lead relatively normal lives, but them in their later years were becoming disabled again as a result of some residual neuropathy. Anybody know anything about this?

Rolfe.

[Lisa Simpson]

I've heard of this--a friend of my mom has it. It's called Post-Polio Syndrome the symptoms are muscle fatigue, tiredness, muscle and joint pain. It's been really hard for her to be disabled by polio a second time.

[KFCA]

One of my former co-workers contracted polio as a youg child in 1954. She never went into an iron lung, but it left her with the life-long necessity of using a heavy leg brace & the "wrist crutches" to get around.

After she worked with us for a few years, she took a medical leave of absence to have some surgery for some post-polio condition which I didn't inquire about (this was about 1987).. I think it had to do with physical change due to the long-term use of the brace & crutches rather than post-polio syndrome however.

[Capsid]

Arthur C Clarke, the science fiction writer, has post polio syndrome. He is confined to a wheelchair.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/765385.stm

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

A long while ago I saw a PBS documentary on polio which included interviews of several people who had spent time in the iron lungs. Unfortunately the webpage on that documentary is no longer on their site (www.pbs.org).

But using the title of the documentary, "A Paralyzing Fear: The Story of Polio in America", I found this site that has some information:
http://www.teachspace.org/lauren/polio/links.html

I also found a Post-Polio website:
http://www.post-polio.org/