A new device called VAPCare aims to bring down the mortality rate of pneumonia-affected ICU patients by automating the manual process of secretion clearance and oral cleansing performed by nurses.

A Bangalore-based medical device company has come up with the device that aims to bring down the mortality rate of pneumonia-affected ICU patients by automating the manual process of secretion clearance and oral cleansing performed by nurses. VAPCare has been registered with the US Food and Drug Administration, and the manufacturer claims that it is the world's only intelligent secretions and oral hygiene management system which reduces chances of acquiring ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).

VAP is a type of lung infection that affects ICU patients on mechanical ventilators and directly leads to over 250,000 deaths annually in India alone. Manual suctioning of secretions is time-consuming, and the shortage of well-trained nurses means that this protocol is not always followed. By automating this critical infection prevention processes, VAPCare improves protocol compliance and consistency and is expected to drastically reduce VAP cases and VAP-related deaths.

It has been almost eight months since the launch of VAPCare and it is currently being used in multiple hospitals across Bangalore and New Delhi. The VAPCare is designed by an eight-member team, currently incubated in InnAccel, that includes an emergency physician Dr Vimal Kishore Kakani.

The manufacturer explains, “In 2014, we did a clinical merging of tertiary care hospitals in Bangalore. We came up with 150 different observations by following doctors, nurses, patients and clinical staff. From this, we filtered out 70 different unmet needs which had negative outcomes and they had to be solved. We attended conferences, did a lot of secondary research, visited many hospitals and read up on published papers and we came up with a list of top 10 problems which would create a larger impact if they are solved. So VAP was in that list. After recognising the problem, we dug out how it is caused and how prevalent it is. We created the VAPCare which is a secretion management system which automatically checks secretions and removes them from the airway ensuring that it does not cause VAP.”

VAPCare also does an oral lavage to keep the oral cavity clean. It reduces the burden of the nurses ensuring that one of their activities is taken care of by the device which has to be set only once in a day and it keeps working for the rest of the day. VAPCare comes with a standard one-year warranty and it comes with disposables which have ports that fit in the oral cavity and remove the secretions. There are two sets of disposables - one set has to be changed per patient and one has to be changed every 48 hours to prevent infection. VAPCare was tested in a single-arm study in Hyderabad on 30 patients with a 100 per cent success.

Dr. Parvathy P, Assistant Professor at Department of Anesthesiology in Sree Gokulam Medical College, Trivandrum, says “In small hospitals where there is a shortage of staff, this device could be a game-changer. Also, the proper technique of suction important to prevent VAP and this device can give good results if nurses are inexperienced to handle the suction. However, the application of this device in small hospitals also depends on how affordable the device is.”

The author Parvathy Jayakrishnan is a Bangalore-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.