COPD Emergency treatment.

For the last 50 years within healthcare in the UK, there has been a gradually rising tide of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients, from a mix of smoking, coal mining, and air pollution.

 

Whilst those 3 risk factors have declined in the UK, they are still prevalent and worsening worldwide. With the improved hospital and community care of COPD patients in the UK, there are many more people with this chronic disease who are in a recurrent cycle of regular admissions to hospital. Many of these patients need two key interventions in the acute phase of their hospital admission: fixed-rate oxygen, traditionally provided by a low-cost venturi device; and nebulised broncho-dilators. These two treatments are mutually exclusive in a standard care setting and need to be rotated repeatedly, causing high nursing staffing demand, high usage of single-use equipment, and causing significant downstream expense when patients decompensate and need high dependency settings.