Date: Fri 10-Apr-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: MICHEL

Quick Words:

schools-invention-Staples

Full Text:

Jennifer Staples `Tracheosimp'-- NHS Student's Invention Could Save Lives

(with cut)

BY MICHELE HOGAN

What would you do if you saw someone gasping for breath, or worse, turning

blue, with an obstruction in his windpipe?

Would you get a pen knife and a straw, and try your best? Would you know where

the victim's trachea was, exactly?

Jennifer Staples, junior at Newtown High School, has invented the tracheosimp,

which according to Jennifer would make an emergency tracheotomy simple.

In an emergency, the medic would place the device just below the adam's apple,

and lift a lever. This would send a sterilized catheter into the windpipe and

allow oxygen to enter the victim's wind pipe immediately.

Although Jennifer expects that emergency medical care givers would be among

the first to use her tracheosimp, she expects that one day her device would be

in first-aid kits everywhere, especially on airplanes.

Jennifer got the idea a few years ago, when she watched Rescue 911 on TV. In

the show, she watched an emergency medical team use the tubing from inside a

ball point pen for a tracheotomy, and she thought that someone should invent a

better system.

That someone ended up being Jennifer. She made initial drawings for a

sterilized trachemoty device in the middle school, then returned to the idea a

few months ago.

This February she researched tracheotomies and made a prototype of her device.

It won first place at the state level in the health category at the Invention

Convention March 28, and will be entered in the national convention this

summer in Las Vegas.

Responding to the Invention Convention judges' strong recommendations, she is

patenting the idea.

Very inexpensive and compact, the prototype she made used less than $10 worth

of materials and would fit in your pocket (not including the oxygen tank which

can be attached to it).

Although she's been told that it is a brilliant idea, it's not quite ready for

market yet.

The oxygen flows through it perfectly, but she has yet to get any volunteers

for clinical testing.