Need some lung mucus for diagnostic purposes, but don’t want to inflame your patient’s bronchial tubes? Lucky for you Medical Acoustics, LLC’s Lung Flute, which is far less irritating when it comes to extracting that precious precious mucus, has just been cleared by the FDA…
This simple, hand-held, disposable device supplements the patient’s natural mucus clearing system by introducing low frequency sound waves into the lungs. The Lung Flute is a novel medical device which will play a significant roll in drug development for asthma, chronic bronchitis, community acquired pneumonia and lung cancer. Deep lung secretions can be obtained to determine drug efficacy and progression of treatment for pulmonary drugs. Currently, sputum induction using hypertonic saline is the standard method, a process that is expensive, time consuming, uncomfortable to the patient and often causes bronchial spasm and inflammation. As a result, sputum samples, using hypertonic saline, cannot be collected more frequently then every 48 hours. The Lung Flute addresses these challenges and will allow sputum samples to be collected every 20 minutes which is important when monitoring inflammatory markers during asthma attacks.
More from the press release and Medical Associates…