Images of a homemade device promising to help coronavirus patients spread on Mexican social media. Specialists clearly advise against its use.
Homemade concentrators give a false sense of security
Specialists believe that, due to the complexity with which an oxygen concentrator works, its domestic manufacture is not possible and warn that the mechanisms shown on social media lack the performance required by a patient with low blood oxygen levels, which can generate a false sense of security.
A concentrator, according to the technical specifications published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2016, is designed "to concentrate oxygen from ambient air" and supply it to patients with hypoxemia, that is, with low blood oxygen levels.
The device separates oxygen from nitrogen using filters, explained Nicolás Roux, head of Rehabilitation and Respiratory Care at the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina. COVID-19 is one of the diseases that “affect the lungs' ability to perform proper gas exchange, that is, to eliminate carbon dioxide and receive oxygen,” Roux added.
The coronavirus “causes pneumonia, an infection that inflames one or both lungs and can fill them with fluid or purulent material (…) That's why the patient experiences shortness of breath and low oxygen saturation,” said Ramón Aguilar, president of the Latin American Society of Respiratory Care in Mexico.
The reason for providing oxygen, Aguilar explained, is to help the areas of the lungs without fluid or purulent material to oxygenate better and reduce or eliminate shortness of breath, thereby reducing the heart's workload.
It can "lead to death"
“Due to the complexity of its operation and its medical use, it is not possible to manufacture it at home,” Roux warned.
Aguilar explained that the devices shown on social media circulate air with an oxygen concentration identical to that of the environment, approximately 21%, while a patient with hypoxemia requires levels of 90%. In its technical specifications for these devices, the WHO establishes a standard concentration greater than 82%
