Thursday, November 14, 2013

Car Mechanic Invents Potential
Baby Saving Device

Oma finds this amazing.  Having had the honor of watching Reef's birth; Oma can see how this simple device could prove life-saving!  (On the humorous side - how did that baby get dressed inside the womb? No wonder the baby is having trouble being born!)

With Jorge Odón’s device, a plastic bag inflated around a baby’s head
is used to pull it out of the birth canal. (Diego Giudice for The New York Times)

The idea came to Jorge Odón as he slept. Somehow, he said, his unconscious made the leap from a YouTube video he had just seen on extracting a lost cork from a wine bottle to the realization that the same parlor trick could save a baby stuck in the birth canal.

It may seem counterintuitive to put a plastic bag over a baby's head to save its life, but that's exactly what Jorge Odon says his invention will do. The car mechanic from Argentina has created the Odon Device to help pull babies stuck in the birth canal to safety. The attendant using the device would simply slip the plastic bag and sleeve around the soon-to-be-newborn's head, inflate the bag, and pull until the baby pops out. Odon says he came up with the idea while watching a YouTube video about retrieving a cork that had fallen into a wine bottle.

Doctors are hailing the contraption (which will undergo further testing) as a potential lifesaver in poor countries and as a way to reduce c-sections. "This is very exciting," Dr. Mario Merialdi, the World Health Organization's chief coordinator for improving maternal and perinatal health, told the New York Times. "This critical moment of life is one in which there's been very little advancement for years."

3 comments:

  1. And how many babies will have spine injuries, leading to mental disability, physical disability or death from this method ? Seems most doctors are in too much of a dang hurry to wait for the natural process.

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  2. itmaiden - I believe that this device is being considered for use in emergency situations only; not as an instrument of convenience.

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