CPAP respiration is used in emgergency medicine but not only there: A lot of patients have CPAP machines and masks at home to help them with their snoring and sleep apnea. The most important thing about this are the masks, they have to fit nearly perfect and that should be achieved via 3D printing.
Non-invasive CPAP respiration (or NIV-CPAP) is a ventilation mode that uses an mask over the face of the patient. The technique is mainly used by sleeping apnea and snoring. Sleeping apnea is a disease that causes breaks during breathing and snoring. Most of the people don’t mind their snoring problem but it can come with other serious health risks. Studies have shown that sleeping apnea stands in context with depression, diabetes, high blood pressure and strokes.
If a doctor diagnoses the disease there are different treatments for it. In most cases a CPAP respiration worn during the night will help the patients. But for the respiration there are breathing masks used that can be ordered only in 4 different sizes. If you are lucky one of these sizes fit to your face and everything is ok, but half of the patients have problems with the masks and stop the treatment because of the not perfect fitting masks. And that is where 3D printing can be used to help the patients with 3D printed masks. Metamason has collected 3 Million Dollar for this project back in 2015. Now a second young company tries the same thing: Inspirate Medical, funded by two young entrepreneurs Norman Wanto and Ivan Suriady. They want to see the first 3D printed CPAP masks in use by the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017.
The development process took about half a year. It was intensive and we were trying new things every day. Research and development cost about $20,000 to $30,000 in total
To produce the perfect fitting masks a 3D scan of the face is needed. Then a special developed algorithm calculates the perfect form of the mask and creates a 3D model, which is printed and the mask is finished. Common CPAP masks cost between 150 and 300 dollar – the 3D printed masks will be a little bit more expensive, but the price difference will be no problem because this technique ensures that the mask fits perfect and only a perfect fitting mask could help the patient.
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