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Reporter: Dust-busters to the rescue of lung patients
Jay L. Abramoff

To patients with muscular dystrophy and emphysema, the simple but essential act of coughing can require a surgical procedure or a device that costs thousands of dollars. Now, Jerusalem physician Eliezer Be�eri has built a simple and far less costly device to help such patients clear their lungs.

Technicians at Jerusalem�s Alyn rehabilitation hospital, where he works, have built a prototype of Be�eri�s invention, the "vaculator," based on a simple valve and an ordinary hand-held "dust-buster" vacuum cleaner.

South African-born Be�eri, 40, expects his device will cost "a few hundred dollars." The price of the American-made "inexsufflator" currently in use is $5,000 in the U.S. and $7,000 in Israel. Until this device was introduced in 1993, the only option for people who cannot cough was a tracheotomy, where a tube is inserted into the lungs via a hole cut in the throat. The inexsufflator uses a face mask rather than the tube, as will the vaculator.

In addition to chronic sufferers, who would use a vaculator at home, Be�eri expects his device to be useful in hospital emergency rooms or intensive care units.

Be�eri says he has no idea when the vaculator will be on the market. In fact, it�s Alyn which has applied for a patent and begun preliminary talks with international biomedical firms for commercial development of the vaculator. "I�m a doctor," he insists, "not the head of a start-up company."

November 4, 2002

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