Medical Ventilator

A medical ventilator is a type of breathing apparatus that provides mechanical ventilation, moving breathable air into and out of the lungs to deliver breaths to a patient who cannot breathe adequately on their own. Ventilators range from simple hand-operated bag valve masks to computerized, microprocessor-controlled machines, and they are used chiefly in intensive care medicine, home care, emergency medicine and as part of an anesthesia machine during surgery. Earlier generations of ventilators were often called respirators, a term still commonly used for them in the 1950s, particularly for the Bird respirator, though modern medical usage now reserves respirator for a protective face mask instead.