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Comment by bena | Hacker News Reader

It could also be the situation where the loss due to complications due to the equipment are far less than the loss due to the disease.

If you lose 10% to contaminated bottles, 15% to various malfunctions, and another 5% for things related to the procedure I can't even begin to consider, that's 30% mortality rate for this procedure.

But if another has 0% mortality rate but due to some other factor is not available in appropriate quantities, let's say there are only enough resources to service 10 cases a day, then your 11th case can either take a 100% mortality rate for doing nothing, or a 30% mortality rate with the other procedure. You take the better chance.

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I think there is confusion, on the videos and picture they are using medical equipment, it's just used in a different way.

The point dmix makes is that "a lack of regulation is saving lives". The device doesn't have to be tested, it doesn't require licensed operators, etc.

And I was agreeing that it is saving lives, but that it is not particularly indicative that regulation is killing people.

That the incident of a disease may be so prevalent or that access to modern hospitals may be so scarce that in certain cases, taking an unregulated approach is better than no approach.

This is in India. This would never be discovered in a developed nation because there is no need for it. A ventilator has a far better success rate. However, in India, in other developing nations, this is necessary. And the fact that it is simple to set up, that it can be set up by someone with little training, etc are all benefits in those situations. That even with what would be considered a pretty poor mortality rate, it's still better than the alternatives at their disposal.

You say, "A ventilator has a far better success rate." I am skeptical of this statement; what are your sources? I would expect this setup to have the same success rate as any other bubble CPAP machine.

it would be hard to cite source on a new device/discovery/method such as this as there would not be any.

The comment higher up the chain covered some of the potential failure methods of the new system.

> If you lose 10% to contaminated bottles, 15% to various malfunctions, and another 5% for things related to the procedure I can't even begin to consider, that's 30% mortality rate for this procedure.

There's no reason to expect that those rates would be higher for this equipment design than for the $15000 one, rather than lower.

That comment also seems to demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of what's being discussed, since contaminated bottles are vanishingly unlikely to infect the patient — the air goes from the patient to the bottle, through a dry plastic tube, not vice versa.

You do understand the numbers and examples were made up to illustrate a point, that even if it weren't as good as a modern hospital that it's better than the current alternative.

Discussing the minutiae is immaterial.

Why should there be a loss due to a contaminated bottle when the children are only breathing INTO the bottle?

The bottle and the water in it are physically connected by tubing right into the patient's airways. Infection is definitely possible.

Most hospitals have access to an autoclave ! It seems trivial to sterilize the bottles

In USA the large companies who will lose profits from simple alternatives will make up reasons to not lose their profits.

What about in the EU?

From an article without a paywall:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40498395

Basically, they don't have access to ventilators. The current recommendation still has a mortality rate of 1:7 but the bottle method seems to be around 1:56 (if I'm reading that right).

So, the order of preference is ventilator, shampoo bottle, then low-flow oxygen. In other words, what I said. This is a case of not having access to the best method, but having something that works better than the other secondary methods.

This will not and should not replace ventilators in modern hospitals, but in places where ventilators are unavailable, this is a good solution.

Hospital-acquired infection is common enough.

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