Design and evaluation of a novel and sustainable human-powered low-cost 3D printed thermal laryngoscope

Excerpt

Laryngoscopes are an essential and necessary piece of equipment used by anesthesiologist on a daily basis. Early designs of laryngoscopes date back as early as the 1700’s, however, significant innovation and modifications began to take place in 1913 and have continued to the present day [1]. Critical to the operation of laryngoscopes is the requirement of a functional light source. While recent designs of laryngoscopes incorporate high efficiency Light Emitting Diodes (LED) as light sources, they still require power from a stored source that is either rechargeable or disposable. This can become a challenge in low resource settings where batteries or electricity are not readily accessible. An investigation of health facilities in 11 sub-Saharan African countries revealed that 26% of health facilities and 1% of hospitals had no access to electricity. Similarly, 6% of hospitals relied on generator-only power, and 66% of hospitals were classified as not having reliable access to electricity [2]. Furthermore, batteries are expensive, often difficult to acquire and their performance deteriorates over time. Batteries that are not properly recycled lead to toxic effects on the environment and potentially harmful consequences to the surrounding communities. In an effort to create a novel laryngoscope with a completely renewable energy source, we sought to design and evaluate a novel human-thermal powered laryngoscope based on the Seebeck effect. …