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Our May meeting began with business: We closed nominations for chapter
officers, and we held elections. The results: Tony Barcellos was re-elected to
the office of secretary/treasurer, Tim Feldman was elected vice president, and
Dave Eden was elected president. Dave won in absentia because he wasn't feeling
well. We hope that he gets better soon (that way, I can finally goof off as VP,
while he does all the work as president!).
Our featured presentation was by long-time chapter member Dean Hillsman, M.D.
His specialty is pulmonary physiology and rehabilitation; in other words,
breathing difficulties, such as those caused by asthma and emphysema. Over a
period of many years, Dr. Hillsman has developed computer-aided instruments for
evaluating breathing patterns, and for actually teaching patients proper
breathing patterns as part of their rehabilitation.
For example, emphysema causes lung damage that makes it harder for the patient
to breathe out than to breathe in. Careful training alleviates this problem to
some extent; a trained physician can prescribe a sort of "mechanical Rx": a
prescription for a better breathing pattern. Dean's equipment can be used in a
doctor's office to train the patient how to follow that pattern.
Dean demonstrated his PC-based equipment to us (I was the "guinea pig"). I
breathed through a mouthpiece that was connected to the equipment, while
watching a moving dot on the PC's screen. The dot followed the pattern that
Dean set up: smooth inhalation, a slight pause, smooth exhalation, another
pause, and then repetition. The moving dot showed the amount of air that I
should be breathing in and out: the "Rx". As I breathed through the tube, a
white squiggle was drawn on the screen, showing me how much air I was actually
breathing in and out.
If I followed the correct rhythm, my white squiggle closely followed the moving
dot. After a few minutes, I was able to match it quite closely, making the
squiggle smoothly follow the moving dot. Dean could adjust the pattern while I
was following it, customizing it for me. There are practically limitless
variations possible. The instrument can beep if my breathing falls out of
adjustable limits, can print out hardcopies of the correct Rx and my measured
breathing pattern, and so on.
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If I were an actual patient, Dean would have me practice the pattern in his
office for some time using his equipment, then I would
practice the same pattern at home daily without any equipment. With enough
practice, patients reportedly can learn to breathe properly without conscious
effort.
The mechanical and electrical parts of this arrangement are fairly simple, if
costly (it's for trained physicians and researchers). The PC and its software
do much of the work. The software is written in LabVIEW, a powerful data
acquisition and equipment control programming system by National Instruments.
Some of Dean's equipment is in use weaning patients off of dependence on
"ventilator" systems (mechanical breathing aids). While I am certainly no
expert on this subject (and I hope that I got the facts straight in this
article!), it looks to me as if Dean's equipment and methodology hold much
promise for people with serious respiratory difficulties. Dean holds the
copyright on his display technique, and has a patent pending on his instrument.
Further details are available on the Web site of his company, Sierra
Biotechnology Company, at www.sierrabiotech.com.
We thanked Dean for his demonstration. It's amazing to see what a laptop
computer, some small instruments, and a powerful program can do together!
Our June meeting will be held on Wednesday, June 23 (the fourth Wednesday) in
the same building (the Yolo County Public Library in Davis), but it will be
held in the small meeting room near the information desk, not in the large
meeting room in which we usually meet. Our July meeting will be held in the
usual place, but we have had to delay it one day: it will be held on the fourth
Thursday, on July 22, not on the fourth Wednesday. In August we will be back on
our usual schedule.
We hope to see you at all of our meetings--come on down!
——Tim Feldman
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