Have you been installing brakes at the Midas and can barely walk around the block because of mesothelioma? Restore your lung capacity to that of Lance Armstrong with a simple Lung Washing!

Asbestosis and Silicosis are the cancerous results of inhalation of foreign particles. Dna replication corruption for these types of lung cancer is the most widely accepted reason (see the recent Scientific American article).

(Conjecture:) These small particle antagonists are unable to be expelled normally by cilia or mucosal flem action. The porous nature of the lungs and gravity makes this difficult. Using an an oxygen carrying liquid (Liquivent) which has show to allow eg: a mouse to breathe submerged, it should be possible to "irrigate" or fill and wash the lungs as a minimally invasive procedure without the need for a heart-lung machine. The patient would be sedated for comfort and to reduce oxygen demand. Cleansing might be done with laproscopic spraying and/or by flooding and whole body rocking. Foreign particles would be removed with the liquid. The patient breathes normally with the liquid allowing expansion and contraction to aid the suspension of the particles and opening of the passageways. After the liquid is evacuated and sedation wears off, the discomfort might be no worse than that of removal of a breathing tube.
-- kamenmann, Jun 23 2003

(?) Lung lavage http://www.paplungs.org/FAQupd.html#14
From a patient's website [bungston, Oct 06 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

(?) For [Jinbish] http://www.bath.ac....0cmj/HumanBody.html
The trick is to design a network of equally fractal flow and return blood vessels around a very fractal structure. [gnomethang, Oct 06 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Lung Brush http://www.halfbake...m/idea/Lung_20Brush
Equally unlikely to work. [DrCurry, Oct 17 2004]

(?) Inhalation of hypertonic solutions. http://www.update-s...tracts/AB002996.htm
[bungston, Nov 30 2005]

We did this topic before - see link in link, which refers to irrigating lungs with Perflubron. You aren't going to be able to wash much out - most of it gets embedded in the tissues of the lungs.
-- DrCurry, Jun 23 2003


Wasn't this also in a bruce sterling book, where the main character was getting some illegal treatment south of the border . . .? Heavy Weather I think...
-- timpestuous, Jun 23 2003


Oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion. WTCTTISITMWIBNIIWR – “The Abyss”.
-- Shz, Jun 23 2003


I wasn't aware of any problems with the removal of liquivent - maybe the idea was half baked. One article made it sound like the amount left would evaporate with respiration. Possibly the fix is Lung Mop with a final finishing using a Lung Swiffer.

PS: as a newbie I found this site surfing for answers to the dimpled golf ball.
-- kamenmann, Jun 23 2003


It's best to lurk around the place for at least a week to really get a sense of what halfbaking is all about. You're obviously able to coherently identify a problem, so you should have no problem defining solutions.
-- thumbwax, Jun 23 2003


Lung lavage is baked. See link. The author has had it done many times.
-- bungston, Jun 23 2003


[kamenmann] my condolences. I wish I could remember what brought me here.
-- FloridaManatee, Jun 24 2003


what is it with doctors? the ones I used to work with would put half a gallon of warm water in someone's ear until their eyeballs moved up and down. they are quite mad I tell you.
-- po, Jun 24 2003


Thanks for the new (to me) info on lung lavage. I'll look into it further. Off hand, I still tend to think asbestosis and silicosis seem to deserve to be classified apart from tar (mechanical vs chemical bonding) and are in the small subset of cancers which might be halted or improved. Without sedation, with the intent of chemical scarring, the normal concious removal of a breathing tube, and images of a drowing recussiation can all be imagined to be unpleasant. However, the proposed sedated lung washing would entail none of these attributes other than discomfort found in recoveries of intubation. Maybe someday an improved liquid will be developed and someone will try it for these cancers mentioned.

PS: I may be mislead after reading the "best" submissions though this site appears to have a mix of the serious and the fun (I visit The Onion often also). I must have gotten too engrossed doing reasearch and patent reading.

FYI, dimpled cars came up in research for the understanding of why the dimpled golf ball can fly 2x as far as a normal one. The impetus was understanding if the rotational spin of a "dimpled object in flight" could be used for drag reduction. That one is probably in the dough formation stage. Anyway, like FSF, this site provides an opportunity to "publish" potentially useful ideas and alleviate confining protectionism.
-- kamenmann, Jun 24 2003


[bliss]: I guess that the dimples add to the surface area of the ball (I'm not a golfer - and not about to find out). Similarly, I guess that the structure of a lung is supposed to maximise the surfave area of the organ to absorb as much oxygen as quickly as possible.

Cheers [g'thang]
-- Jinbish, Jun 24 2003


I googled up a hit on black lung (coal dust lung disease) treated with high volume lung lavage. The hit mentioned it in passing and I could not find anything else about it. The thing about particles like asbestos / coal dust is that they are gobbled up by professional gobble-up cells in the lung tissue, and thus are not amenable to rinsing out.
-- bungston, Jun 24 2003


A new and effective treatment has been developed for sufferers of Cystic Fibrosis - breathing in misted sea water.

It was noticed that surfing seemed to be beneficial for CF sufferers and those with various other bronchial complaints. A quick research program has confirmed the benefit but not yet the mechanism - doctors aren't waiting to find all the answers, the improvement from the treatment is too good to ignore.

CF is fundamentally different from mesothelioma however ([bungston]'s comment above is spot on) but this does give an example of a type of 'lung washing' having fantastic clinical outcomes.
-- ConsulFlaminicus, Nov 29 2005


I posted a link on the benefits of inhaling hyperosmolar solutions. It makes sense.
-- bungston, Nov 30 2005



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