Electromed, Inc., CEO Bob Hansen says that people with cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, or “people who don’t have normal absorption or drainage of the secretions that are passing through their lungs,” will benefit from his New Prague–based company’s Smart-Vest Airway Clearance System.
Hansen says that fluid in the lungs is “a little bit like oil in your car: a little bit is fine, but too much is not good. Too much, then, provides the milieu for the propagation of a wide range of lung disease. The most common—and of course the lethal one—is pneumonia.”
The SmartVest is an inflatable fabric vest that delivers high-frequency chest wall oscillations at a rate of about 5 to 20 times per second. This creates “mini-coughs” that “shear mucus away from the walls of the airways, reduce the viscosity of the secretions, and propel the mucus towards the larger airways where it can be expectorated or suctioned more easily,” according to the company’s Web site.
Hansen says surgical patients could also benefit from his product. “The greatest threat to people who go in to have surgery is not the procedure—it’s whether they are going to develop a lung infection afterwards,” he says.
The vest, made of a soft fabric, comes with a portable, programmable generator with its own carrier, so patients can use it anywhere. Use of the vest can be self administered or administered by a parent in the case of a child.
“It’s estimated that only 40 to 60 percent of prescribed medicines or devices are actually used by the patient,” Hansen says. “Therefore, we put a lot of money, effort, thought, imagination, and sensitivity into the actual use of the device. When we developed our generator, I had our engineers make it as simple to use as a TV. We have six- and seven-year-old children who can give themselves their own treatment in the morning and at night.” Previously, kids who needed airway clearance assistance had to get pounded on the chest and back, a procedure called postural drainage.
The SmartVest treatment, by contrast, is not intrusive, and patients can watch TV, use a computer, or read while using it.
