Abstract
An immediate start of artificial ventilation by inserting a tracheal tube through mouth or nose can improve a survival rate at the emergency situations suffering from apnea. In this study, we report a novel multipurpose expanding medical tube which can be used as a tracheal tube which maintains the shape for the airway. We pursued the possible clinical application of the expanding tube to widen narrowed airway by inflating it after inserting in a thinned condition utilizing its flexible transforming capability. In practice, in the current study, we made a prototype model of the expanding tube made of nylon, and studied the structural transformation by numerical simulation. Additionally, we created a model of the airway structure from mouth to trachea, and evaluated the feasibility of the test expanding tube as a tracheal tube by applying to that upper airway model.
