For more than a decade, Robert De Lorenzo, MD, MSCI, MSM, FACEP, vice chair of research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, and R. Lyle Hood, PhD, associate professor of mechanical engineering, have worked to create devices to improve airway management, specifically in combat settings.
They recently worked with the university’s Medical Design Innovations Lab, and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Connor Evans, PhD, to develop three devices that would offer combat medics a suction solution for any setting, from controlled to chaotic. Suction devices remove blood and vomit that can block a wounded patient’s airway and prevent breathing.