Quick-thinking doctor 'MacGyvers' a nebuliser for an asthmatic toddler mid-flight
As well as having a brilliant name, Dr Guru is also the director of Robotic Surgery at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute,
The New York doctor was called on to apply his engineering know-how to a scary situation while he was on board an Air Canada flight from Spain to the US.
Mid-flight, a two-year old boy began having an asthma attack. The toddler was distressed and struggling to breath so Dr Guru placed an oxygen mask and meter on him. Guru told ABC News that the boy’s blood oxygen level was falling to a dangerously low level - 87-89%. He needed both oxygen and medication but the child’s parents had accidentally packed his asthma meds in their checked luggage.
So Guru had to get creative.
While there was an adult inhaler on the plane, Guru was concerned the boy was too young - and upset - to use it properly. So he fashioned a make-shift nebuliser out of an empty water bottle, a cup, some tape and an oxygen tank.
To create the nebulizer, the surgeon cut the bottle, added oxygen to one end and the adult inhaler through a small hole in the bottle. The oxygen and medication could then be delivered through the bottle’s opening directly to the child through the cup ’mouthpiece’.
After about half an hour and two doses, the boy’s blood oxygen levels came back to around 94 or 95 percent.
"When I was landing, I checked the child and he was playing with the mom," he said.
The doctor said the main lesson here was to also carry necessary medication with you on flights:
"I told the father then that the most important thing is that you never ever leave these medications away," he told ABC News.
I wanted to make sure that everyone realized that we need to carry these things."
