Erica Frenkel The universal anesthesia machine

Until anesthesia, the absence of sensation.

Anesthesia gave surgeons the freedom to operate.

In this hospital, there is one person qualified to deliver anesthesia, and she's qualified because she has 12, maybe 18 months of training in anesthesia.

This was done under local anesthesia, as an outpatient.

The second time was a procedure that involved local anesthesia.

In the background there is a very sophisticated anesthesia machine.

35 million surgeries are attempted every year without safe anesthesia.

It's just a reality of anesthesia. The lungs can be paralyzed.

They have a really cool anesthesia simulation lab out in Baltimore.

So I've talked a lot about anesthesia, and I tend to do that.

It's practiced, it's no anesthesia, it's a rusty old knife, and it was difficult.

Anesthesia gave them the freedom to experiment, to start to delve deeper into the body.

I got him to come with me anesthesia tech come with me from the U.K.

What if you're in surgery and the power goes out? No lights, no oxygen and your anesthesia stops flowing. It happens constantly in hospitals throughout the world, turning routine procedures into tragedies. Erica Frenkel demos one solution the universal anesthesia machine.

And actually, it's the model that we expect to work for delivering anesthesia in these environments.

Well we have a whole O.R. team, general anesthesia, nurses, and another doctor across from me.

I'm a senior resident in anesthesia in intensive care at the University Hospital of the West Indies.

And we could take a very simple view and say, well, it is that which we lose when we fall into deep sleep without dreams, or when we go under anesthesia, and it is what we regain when we recover from sleep or from anesthesia.

It takes about an hour and a half to two hours, depending on where it's done, under general anesthesia.

But what is exactly that stuff that we lose under anesthesia, or when we are in deep, dreamless sleep?

And, so, very quickly, Bob can just get one puncture, local anesthesia, and do this harvest as an outpatient.

I came to the Heart Institute in 2006, as part of my elective in my anesthesia and intensive care program.

Essentially, to deliver anesthesia, you want as pure oxygen as possible, because eventually you're going to dilute it essentially with the gas.

We had the pause points immediately before anesthesia is given, immediately before the knife hits the skin, immediately before the patient leaves the room.

Because we were in the age before anesthesia, the agony of the patient is really as much of the public spectacle as the surgery itself.

Now one of the major bottlenecks that we've found that's sort of preventing both the access in the first place and the safety of those surgeries that do happen is anesthesia.

Hopefully you can appreciate the device there curving through the patient's body and removing the patient's bone marrow, instead of with 200 punctures, with just a single puncture under local anesthesia.

And I had to go and ride in the rodeo that night, so I didn't want them to put me under anesthesia, or whatever you call it. And so they sewed my face up.

And what he came up with was this guy, the prototype for the Universal Anesthesia Machine a machine that would work and anesthetize his patients no matter the circumstances that his hospital had to offer.

He went to work every day in an operating theater like this one, trying to deliver anesthesia and teach others how to do so using that same equipment that became so unreliable, and frankly unsafe, in his hospital.

If you're in America and you don't know about this one, we do, because we make it our duty to find out what's appropriate technology for Africa what's appropriately priced, does the job, and we move on. Anesthesia machine multi parameter monitor, operating lights, suction.