The inlet nozzle is securely attached to one end of a chest drainage tube, while the other one lies within the patient’s pleural cavity. By the same mechanism, the Heimlich flutter valve may also facilitate the evacuation of fluid. This way pneumothorax is safely evacuated. But during inhalation the free end remains closed, due its compression, preventing the air to be sucked back in the thoracic cavity. When the air passes through the inlet nozzle in the rubber sleeve, the latter one opens allowing the air to escape during expiration. The free end of the rubber sleeve is compressed, so that the two sides remain in contact with each other, in order to achieve this function. The rubber sleeve is attached to the inlet nozzle in such a manner that, during inhalation, it closes off, thus preventing air to be sucked in, through the valve, to the pleural cavity ( Figure 1 ). It has two nozzles, the inlet nozzle which allows the air to pass in the valve through the chest drainage tube attached to it, and the outlet nozzle which allows the air to pass to the environment or a collecting device during expiration.
The valve is made of a plastic case with a rubber sleeve inside. As already mentioned, it is a one-way valve, thus it prevents the evacuated air from travelling back to the thoracic cavity along the attached chest tube. Soon, it became very popular in the outpatient management of patients with prolonged air-leakage from various causes (2), and has also been used in emergency treatment of pneumothorax in battle fronts (3). The inventor of the valve was Henry Heimlich, an American thoracic surgeon who also first described the Heimlich maneuver.
Pleur evac suction portable#
introduced in 1965, the Heimlich flutter valve is a one- way portable device that was designed for use as a drainage procedure in order to avoid the need for intrapleural suction after thoracotomy (1).
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