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March 01, 2005 – Man finally breathes without a ventilator Airline delayed test of pacemaker.
By: Harlan Spector
The ventilator that had gotten Phil Barrett kicked off an airliner went silent Monday, and the quadriplegic from Florida breathed through his nose for the first time since a diving accident 13 years ago.
Barrett returned to University Hospitals of Cleveland by private jet for the first test of an electronic pacemaker that stimulates his diaphragm. Electrodes were implanted in his chest Feb. 16, after the surgery was delayed two days because US Airways had removed Barrett from a Cleveland-bound flight from Tampa.
On Monday, after a night at the Renaissance Cleveland, Barrett sat in the outpatient clinic at UH, wired to a battery pack. His friend Paul Anderson reached beneath Barrett's wheelchair and switched off the ventilator, while Dr. Raymond Onders covered the tracheotomy tube with a finger. Electrical impulses pushed air through his mouth and nose, 12 times a minute.
"I'm fine," Barrett, 33, said after the first breaths. "I feel fine."
The first session went 30 minutes. With training, Barrett is expected to go most of a day without the ventilator. The minimally invasive technology was developed in Cleveland and tested on the first patient in 2000. The late actor Christopher Reeve became the third patient in 2003.
The procedure is still experimental. Onders said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved it for 20 spinal cord-injury patients and 10 patients with Lou Gehrig's disease, a degenerative neurological illness.
Onders, director of minimally invasive surgery at UH, last week implanted the electronic pacemaker in a 19-year-old Canadian man who doesn't remember ever breathing on his own. He was hit by a car when he was 20 months old.
The doctor is also evaluating a Texas veteran who was paralyzed in the Iraqi war. Barrett was flown to Cleveland both times by private jet, after the plane's owners heard about his ordeal with US Airways.
A US Airways spokesman said Monday the airline removed Barrett from the Cleveland flight as a safety measure. Barrett had trouble breathing because of apparent problems with his ventilator, the airline said.
Contact information
Raymond P. Onders M.D.
Associate Professor of Surgery
Case Western Reserve University
Director of Minimally Invasive Surgery
University Hospitals of Cleveland
11100 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44106-5047
216-844-5797
Raymond.onders@uhhs.com