Doctors at New York's largest hospital system got the idea to modify breathing machines with 3D printed parts so they could be used as ventilators. It worked.

See Seven Days, Hundreds of Deaths: New York’s Worst Week Yet Tests Its Coronavirus Response: The pandemic has sparked the grit and ingenuity of the medical community in the nation’s hardest-hit city by Melanie Evans of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"Dr. Hugh Cassiere said he jolted awake on March 25 with the idea of modifying breathing machines using 3-D printed parts to convert them to ventilators.

He and his colleague Stanley John refined the idea for the machines they pulled from storage the next day, confirming that the devices came with software to use them as ventilators. Dr. Cassiere thought the emergency use would help relieve the ventilator shortage, but he didn’t know if doctors would use the devices.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved such use of the devices, manufactured by Philips NV, but only for less-critical patients, not those with the worst symptoms of coronavirus disease. The breathing machines—typically used as bi-level positive airway pressure devices, known as BiPAPs—are for patients who can still breathe on their own. They work as a face mask to deliver oxygen. 

While acutely ill coronavirus patients couldn’t use them, Dr. Cassiere and Mr. John believed some patients could be switched to the Philips device.

The two men worked with a biomedical engineer to produce 3-D printed parts that connected throat tubes to the machines. Soon, at least 50 less-severely ill patients were using them.

Northwell wanted to see if the modified breathing machines could be used for patients who couldn’t breathe on their own. The wife of a ventilated patient who wasn’t expected to survive agreed to try the device on her husband, before his life support was removed. It worked.

Mark Jarrett, a doctor and Northwell Health system’s quality chief, announced on April 1 the decision to expand use of the Philips devices, which also were modified to prevent spread of the virus into the air. He acknowledged it could be used in an emergency for coronavirus patients.

Within three days, doctors at the Northwell hospitals had used the machines for 70 coronavirus patients and another 18 patients without the disease. That helped to limit ventilator use at its 23 hospitals.

The FDA hasn’t issued an emergency-use authorization for the devices, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. The agency said it would allow emergency use if companies applied for it. A Philips spokesman declined to say if the company had done so.

“This is an emergency,” Dr. Jarrett said Monday. “We need to do what we consider safe to keep patients alive.”"