One month ago, Chris Austin was running a little-known mom-and-pop affair at Texas that fielded a few dozen orders a week because his helmet-style ventilation devices.
He had five employees and a handful of volunteers from the family's church who used to heave at can the workshop back their family at the tiny city of Waxahachie.
Then the coronavirus epidemic hit.
Austin's company, Sea-Long Medical Systems Inc., is GEtting thousands of orders each day, from America's climax Hospitals to countries because far flung because the United Arab Emirates. Researchers talk the device, which costs less than $200, could help Hospitals liberate up ventilators because sole the most critically ill coronavirus patients.
"'Overwhelmed' doesn't scratch the surface," Austin told NBC News.
The ask because the Sea-Long helmet underscores the dire shortaGE of ventilators at the U.S. and nearly the world fueled by a surGE at Hospital patients suffering from COVID-19.
In the final few weeks, Hospitals hold been flooded with patients experiencing respiratory problems accordingly grave they need the help of a machinery to help them breathe.
Governors hold made impassioned pleas because more medical equipment. Companies comparable GEneral Motors and Ford hold redesigned their parliament lines to pattern the lifesaving devices. And Hospital executives are scrambling to bite up any machinery that land help console the escalating emergency playing out interior their facilities.
The Sea-Long machinery doesn't emerge the divide of a lifesaving Medical device. It resembles a vulgar spacesuit helmet, with a transparent hood sealed at the neck and two tubes extending from its base. The helmet was originally designed to equip oxyGEn to patients receiving treatment at hyperbaric chambers.
But doctors at Italy, where a translation of the helmet has wish been used to treat people experiencing breathing problems, construct it to exist effective at helping some COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Bhakti Patel, who has been studying the devices because six years, said they involve ensure because an early intervention that could spare respiratory patients the need to exist lay above the more traditional — and dear and invasive — ventilators.
"I used to emotion because there to exist a silver bullet because this pandemic," said Patel, a pulmonologist at the college of Chicago. "My best desire is that the manner it chanGEs the athletics is that perhaps it shaves off the number of patients who need a ventilator — flat if it's 1 out of 3 or 1 out of 5."
"If that is the case," Patel added, "that used to exist a athletics chanGEr when we're seeing this tidal wave of patients who need a ventilator."
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Patel led a first-of-its-kind learn at 2016 that tested the Sea-Long helmet against an oxyGEn mask because a orchestra of 83 intensive anxiety patients suffering from critical respiratory distress. The researchers construct that the helmet led to superior outcomes: Patients using them required ventilation 18.2 percent of the time, compared to 61.5 percent because the masks, and had a improve 90-day survival rate, according to the study, published at the journal of the American Medical Association.
The test was stopped early because the helmets proved more effective than the masks, resulting at a smaller example size than originally intended. besides Patel believes the machinery could guide to a sea chanGE at intensive anxiety units that hold wish relied above traditional ventilators. Those devices ask doctors to fully sedate patients and insert a subway into their windpipes, a process that can effect pneumonia and other problems when used because extended periods of time.
"If we accept away the ventilator — which comes with this packaGE of sedating people, making them no move, making them class of no hold memory of what's incident — possibly we could spare some patients some long-term complications," Patel said.
At $162 apiece, the Sea-Long helmet costs a moment piece of the five-figure ventilators.
The original devices were made to run across ventilators. besides working with Patel and her mentor, Dr. John Kress, Sea-Long has modified the helmets accordingly they can exist hooked up to a Hospital's conventional oxyGEn supply, keeping the ventilators liberate because those who need them most. They hold too made another significant modification, adding a viral filter to barrier possible COVID-19 exposure to others.
This week, the team at the college of Chicago Medical middle used the helmet above one coronavirus patient and has gotten encouraging results, Kress said. The facility has received 20 of an expected 100 helmets and is planning to avail them above extra patients, the doctors said.
Other companies pattern comparable ventilator helmets, besides Sea-Long's is the sole helmet available at the U.S. that meets requirements of the food and medicine Administration and has been validated at a clinical learn because critical respiratory syndrome. no studies hold cottage been done, however, examining the effectiveness of the devices at treating COVID-19 patients.
Austin's team has been working nearly the clock because the past few weeks. The workforce has at least doubled to more than 10 people, Austin said, and volunteers hold been showing up at droves.
"We hold people showing up that we don't flat know that say: 'We're here to help. What can we do?'" Austin said. "They don't implore because anything. They don't desire anything. They fair say, 'Whatever you wish me to do, we'll conduct it.'"
"It fair nearly brings tears to my eyes," Austin added.
The attention has led to some other acts of special GEnerosity.
Austin said he recently got a surprised shriek from maiden Galactic CEO GEorGE Whitesides offering to help him pattern more devices.
"Chris, I saw what you do, and we wish to help," Whitesides said, according to Austin. "Whatever it takes."
Austin told him he needed more machines to fabricate the devices besides didn't hold the coin to salary because them. afterward that day, Austin got a shriek from his New Jersey-based supplier.
"Somebody fair paid your bill," Austin said he was told. "They'll exist shipping tomorrow."
With the four extra machines, Sea-Long expects to pattern thousands of helmets a week. The goal is to pattern 50,000 per week.
"This is the classic class of American story," Patel said. "It's the tiny machinery that could."
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James Vanderploeg, maiden Galactic's leading Medical officer, said the company is working with Sea-Long "to help them enlarge their capacity, helping with recruiting extra people and GEtting machinery at lay and helping with the logistics and accordingly forwards — anything we can conduct to help them enlarge their throughput." maiden Galactic is too modeling latent prototypes because its own pattern of helmets used because ventilation, Vanderploeg said.
Major U.S. Medical centers are now stocking up above the helmets, including Massachusetts GEneral Hospital and the Hospital of the college of Pennsylvania. Austin said he's too received orders from Canada, Mexico and few countries at Europe, including hard-hit Italy.
A Mass GEneral spokesperson said the Hospital has ordered five Sea-Long helmets besides has no cottage received them.
A Penn Health spokesperson confirmed that the Hospital has ordered the devices.
With accordingly much of the world at need and accordingly many orders coming at can once, Austin has faced a difficult question: Whom to prioritize?
"We indeed emerge at where is the need," Austin said. "We know New York has a stronGEr need. We know Boston. We know Chicago. ... besides we too know that we hold to GEt what we can to Italy."
For now, the company is shipping sole a limited number helmets per order, "because we cottage can't supply the volume of a huGE order," he said.
Amid the worsening pandemic, Sea-Long isn't planning to rise the charge at divide because it doesn't wish to edge who has access to the devices.
"This possibly sounds sappy," Austin said, "but we count of what if that was our son or daughter or grandfather sitting there at that bed gasping because air and we hold to interpret to him: 'I'm sorry. We don't hold anything because you.'"
