Breakthrough made in oxygenation of blood

Chennai, Aug 11 (UNI) Researchers here claimed to have developed a new method for oxygenation of blood, known as the Photocatalytic Oxygenation of human blood, which will help patients of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Dr Paul Ramesh Thangaraj, Consultant Cardiothoracic surgeon from Apollo Hospitals, and Prof A Subramanyam, Department of Physics, IIT Madras, have developed the novel method, which comes as a boon for those affected with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which had a prevalence of 11.6 and 8.77 per thousand in men and women respectively, and was the fourth leading cause of death worldwide.

The acute respiratory failure had an estimated incidence of around 30 to 50 per one lakh, with the death rate being 40 to 60 per cent.

Talking to newspersons here yesterday, Dr Thangaraj explained that the new method split the water in the blood into hydrogen and oxygen. ''The oxygen thus formed binds to the blood and is delivered to the tissues effectively circumventing the lung,'' he added.

The duo had used the properties of photocatalytic reaction, which was in essence the same that helped plant make oxygen using sunlight. They used thin film technology and developed a nano porus layer of titanium dioxide/indium tin oxide that was only about 500 nano metre thick (approximately 1/1000th the thickness of human hair) and have used UV light to demonstrate effective oxygenation of human blood for the first time in the world.

The experiments were all conducted in vitro under tightly controlled laboratory controls.

The technology had the potential for a wide range of applications in space travel, mining, deep sea diving, mountaineering and reducing environmental pollution and global warming, he said.

UNI