Martin, TN – Breathe a little easier with The Vest Airway Clearance System; now available at Volunteer Community Hospital and for home use with prescription at Dr. Anant Dalvi’s office at the Martin Specialty Clinic.  The Vest Airway Clearance System represents 5th generation technology from the innovator of high frequency chest wall oscillation.  The first device of its kind designed exclusively for the acute and long term care environments.  The system provides a combination of advantages for delivering airway clearance therapy.  The Vest has been demonstrated to benefit patients in the removal of retained secretions due to both acute and chronic respiratory conditions.  Designed to assist patients in the mobilization of retained secretions that, if not removed, may lead to increased rates of respiratory infection, hospitalization and reduced lung function.  This therapy utilizes a device that generates increased airflow velocities that create cough-like shear forces and decreases secretion viscosity.  Both serve to assist patients in moving retained secretions from smaller airways to larger airways where they can more easily be removed by coughing. 

A variety of patients may benefit from The Vest Airway Clearance System.   Patients with secretion retention associated with impaired ventilation and/or gas exchange, pneumonia, aspiration lung injury, mechanical ventilation, acute respiratory distress syndrome, acute lung injury, acute respiratory failure, and pulmonary insufficiency following trauma or surgery.  Patients with ineffective cough or secretion clearance, due to immobility, deconditioning or muscle weakness associated with obesity, cerebral palsy, quadriplegia, dyspnea, cardiac failure, motor neuron disease, and muscular dystrophies and other myopathies.  In addition, patients with airway clearance dysfunction resulting in impaired ventilation and /or gas exchange from emphysema, chronic bronchitis, cystic fibrosis, asthma, bronchiectasis, and COPD may benefit from the system.  The Vest Airway Clearance System is not intended to treat any specific underlying disease or condition, but rather to provide airway clearance therapy.  For more information on The Vest Airway Clearance System, contact Dr. Anant Dalvi’s office at 587-5321.