COVID-19 Airway Management Isolation Chamber

Objective During the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), health care workers are innovating patient care and safety measures. Unfortunately, many of these are not properly tested for efficacy. The objective of this study was to determine the efficacy of the novel COVID-19 Airway Management Isolation Chamber (CAMIC) to contain and evacuate particulate. Study Design Multi-institutional proof-of-concept study. Setting Two academic institutions: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) and Madigan Army Medical Center (MAMC). Subjects and Methods Smoke, saline nebulizer, and simulated working port models were developed to assess the efficacy of the CAMIC to contain and remove ultrafine particles. Particulate counts were collected at set time intervals inside and outside the system. Results With the CAMIC on, smoke particulate counts inside the chamber significantly decreased over time: r(18) = −0.88, P < .001, WRNMMC; r(18) = −0.91, P < .001, MAMC. Similarly, saline nebulizer particulate counts inside the chamber significantly decreased over time: r(23) = −0.82, P < .001, WRNMMC; r(23) = −0.70, P < .001, MAMC. In the working port model, particulate counts inside the chamber significantly decreased over time: r(23) = −0.95, P < .001, WRNMMC; r(23) = −0.85, P < .001, MAMC. No significant leak was detected in the smoke, saline nebulizer, or working port model when the CAMIC was turned on. Conclusions The CAMIC system appears to provide a barrier that actively removes particles from within the chamber and limits egress. Further studies are necessary to determine clinical applicability. The CAMIC may serve as an adjunct to improve health care worker safety and patient outcomes.

Paean to Bicillin L-A ® and the End of Harry Harlow's Rhesus Monkey Experiments

I was in Harry Harlow's “Pit of Despair,” that walled isolation chamber with a one-way mirror: spent months there, rocking like a horse turned wooden by the blank stare of a mute whisperer into part of an attic's unaccounted boneyard. I do know how it feels to suckle at a wire mother, because a tin mom's teleprompter was the script given me by captors whose transgenic faces tarred my raptor-feathered fight. Isolation, that velvet rope of triage that cannot be deveined, spelled out America's subliminal apartheids like a bride's soft skin that lives within her hardened marriage. I started off homebound, a leitmotif of the Mandela Effect, once a latchkey kid, keyed up in the collective amygdala, then gently cordoned off the way a capsized crew is threaded off from where they tread together until one of them goes lost. Later, I was rigid as the monkey huddled in a corner, egg-eyed like the tempest of an anthropomorphic psychosis that society sections away. That monkey's mutagenic life became the DNA of all human cruelty. I pined for touch while the chemical cartel nudged me with its ammonia waves, and even now, I cry for the word felt.