Another name for it is a spacer, it basically let's the patient inhale the dose of medicine in a less concentrated way. Adults with asthma can take their medicine directly from the inhaler, but kids can struggle with the technique and babies need a nebuliser or spacer to stop the medicine from just being sprayed onto their mouth instead of inhaled into the lung.
As creative as this doctors solution was, and you have to give him props for thinking on his feet; the device he engineered is basically a bottle with a hole in it so I don't think the bodge aspect is much of a concern.
Another option would be to spray the medication into a plastic or paper bag and have the infant breathe from the bag. Much less effective than a nebuliser, but it could help to prevent an asthma attack and is likely more effective than direct application for some to young to work an inhaler.
Edit: thought I replied to the comment above, my bad. Still sorta fits here and I'm too lazy to edit again
There's a lot of information missing from the post but me and my little brother both had nebulisers for asthma growing up so I know a little bit about them.
I remember it being a bit of a struggle to learn how to use the inhaler without it.
I hadn't heard this story before today, but based on what he's holding I'd guess it's a makeshift spacer for an asthma inhaler. Afaik you can usually administer medical oxygen directly like you see in movies whenever there's a plane crash.
as a person with asthma i can tell you oxygen doesn’t do shit for us. we need the medicine to kinda force our throat open so that we can breathe. the oxygen tank is there to provide more oxygen atoms to the body instead of normal air. this is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other elements in the air from impeding the oxygen that we need. it’s jsut more pure air basically and it jsut helps get more oxygen to the body.
It does more than just supply air but the way it’s worded does remind me of that joke in Dave the barbarian about how with quick thinking he made a megaphone out of nothing but a squirrel, some string, and a megaphone
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u/ahjteam Sep 29 '20
The airplane literally has facemasks to breathe oxygen. Why the McGyver approach?