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Design
News June 4, 2001
Terry Blumenthal is not a
medical device designer, but he has an important message for engineers who
design defibrillators. The Wake Forest University psychologist is working with
cardiologist Charles Swerdlow to find ways of reducing the painful electric
shock administered by defibrillators when they activate. "We considered
using weaker electric shocks, but that didn't work," says Swerdlow.
"Then we tried changing the shape of the waveform, but that has not yet
been successful," he explains. They eventually found that when a painless
electric "pre-pulse" precedes a painful electric shock, the
pre-pulse seems to reduce the body's startle response and minimize pain.
"The pre-pulse interrupts everything, including the subsequent processing
of pain," says Blumenthal. "It diminishes the neural circuits' ability
to respond to subsequent painful stimulus," he says. Testing the hypothesis
involved delivering 150V shocks to volunteers, who then rated the shock's
painfulness with and without pre-pulses. Although volunteers received the same
shock, the painfulness was rated lower with the pre-pulse. "There may be a
variety of ways to integrate these finding into other applications using sound,
sight, and other modalities," says Blumenthal. For more information, e-mail
blumen@wfu.edu. from: http://www.manufacturing.net/dn/index.asp?layout=articleWebzine&articleId=CA83188&stt=001&