MOUNTAINEERING NEWS ITEM

Research developed as Modern Breathing Circuit

TUESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 2008
Submitted By: Mariangela Silvestre

Closed circuit breathing device could transform the lives of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

A UNIQUE partnership between Smiths Medical, part of the FTSE 100 technology business Smiths Group, and University College London (UCL) has resulted in the development of a breakthrough clinical device that could transform the lives of patients with COPD across the world. COPD will be the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The new technology is based on a closed circuit oxygen device invented over 50 years ago by the British rocket scientist Tom Bourdillon, who hoped that it would help take him to the top of the world.

Three days before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, Bourdillon nearly got there first with the help of his ground-breaking invention. When he and his climbing partner Charles Evans, a British brain surgeon, set out on the first ever summit attempt they were breathing pure oxygen from the device. It helped them climb higher than any man had ever been before and at speeds that have rarely been matched since.

The two men were just 90 metres from the summit when Evans’ device malfunctioned dashing their hopes of becoming the most celebrated mountaineers in the world. Three days later Hillary and Norgay claimed that honour using open circuit oxygen devices.

Bourdillon believed that closed circuit oxygen was more efficient and effective than open circuit because a closed circuit efficiently recycles exhaled oxygen, which would be lost to the atmosphere in an open circuit.

His research was forgotten for 50 years but now Smiths Medical and UCL have developed Bourdillon’s idea into a breakthrough medical device that could help patients with COPD, which is a disease of the lungs in which the airways become narrowed leading to a limitation of the flow of air to and from the lungs, causing shortness of breath.

Bourdillon’s research was rediscovered by Jeremy Windsor and Roger McMorrow, mountaineering scientists at the UCL Centre for Altitude, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE), who had the idea to redevelop it into a modern breathing circuit for climbers.

For more details on this news, please visit http://pr-usa.net.

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