A novel penetrator for preventing tissue structure damage during pleural decompression procedure

Tension pneumothorax(tPTX) refers to air accumulation in the pleural cavity, which is a life-threatening condition. In clinical practice, the intervention is performed when tPTX is suspected. Needle thoracostomy (NT) is the primary treatment recommended by both civil and military guidelines. This is an invasive procedure and is often performed in challenging emergency settings such as the pre-hospital environment. However, it is reported that the effective rate is low. Due to the complexity of the pleural disease, there are several barriers of a successful pleural decompression, such as misdiagnosis, unsuccess treatment and complications of the treatment. One of the problems regarding current instruments used in NT procedure is that the tissue structure could be damaged by the overshoot of the needle-like penetrator. To address this problem, a novel all-in-one device is designed for emergency management of tension pneumothorax. The novel penetrator, which is a sub-assembly of the novel all-in-one device, is aimed at safely penetrating the chest wall and creating a fluid pathway between pleural cavity and ambient air. This research presents the characterization of one safety parameter of the tissue-structure-protection mechanism of the penetrator. In the present study, the mechanism is triggered by a custom-made clipper and the impact force is then measured by an impact hammer. The result shows that the maximum G force generated by the spring-loaded tissue-structure-protection mechanism will not exceed the lung damage threshold found in an animal trial.