$3 Cutting-Edge Healing Device, Field Tested in Haiti

What "alternative treatment"?

yup. this will get patented. the cost to make might only be $3, the cost to buy will be much higher.

I know that there are similar devices coming on the market in USA soon. The devices are in FDA trials now, which can take a few years.

Also, I should point out that here in the USA you still should go to a doctor for your wounds and not try to DIY a bandage. Even these NPWT treatments described in the article need someone who knows what they're doing to apply and change the dressings. Remember that you are more likely to die from the infection than the wound itself!

Too big a danger that someone will sue you.

A friend of my dad's developed a low-cost medical device for use in Africa. It worked, but not as well as expensive devices, and it wasn't taken up.

There's a lot of bureaucracy that stands in the way of getting affordable (but less advanced) medical equipment onto the field.

On the other hand, if you want to field test an expensive device in a third world country, you can lobby the right people and splash a few bribes around. The Constant Gardener (fictional, yes, but I doubt it's far from the truth) is about this. Cheap devices aren't worth the effort.

From the article it sounds like better devices are available, it's just that they cost a lot of money ($100/day rental, it says) and need electricity to run. For this reason it might never be considered ethical to test it in a richer country where those expensive devices are available. For a poorer country where the expensive alternative is not an option things may be different though.

To be honest, I can barely tell if this is just a troll comment. If you are serious though, perhaps the testing isn't of the "medical" effectiveness which appears to be known but rather its "engineering" effectiveness.

Yes, it's ethical.

This is a cheaper way to apply a known-effective wound treatment -- not a speculative implant or drug that's hard to monitor. The participation means more professional attention to those treated. The alternative is not expensive state-of-the-art suction dressing, but cruder care and less attention.

To apply the expensive risk-averse rules of a rich country to a poor country would be more unethical.

It seems that in the underlying concepts that show that this device can work are already well known. That is, it is known that vacuum suction helps wounds and there are already existing approved devices that already do that.

So the only think she was testing is whether the rather simple mechanics of that particular device will work as expected.

So it does not seem to be something especially dangerous.

Natural experiment. You take a whole bunch of people who have naturally received wounds, classify them as best you can by severity of wound, some people get suction, some people merely get bandages, and keep track of how long it takes people to heal. With enough people in the study (probably not all that many if the effect is as large as the article makes it out to be) any difference in individual healing time or minor problems in the mischaracterization of wounds will average out. Problems like this are exactly why statistical tests take into account things like standard deviation.

Isn't the whole point of a large sample size to account for "quirks" in any given individual?

Actually, yes.. But they test them on pigs, not humans.

I've seen a study where they've caused minor wounds by puncturing the skin of a finger, so I guess its possible here, you can get people to volunteer for all sorts of things.

Specific study was a psychology one though,not a medical one,but it was to test how long wounds took to heal (independent variable being the happiness of patients or similar).

as far as I know, it's not particularly clear yet (surprising, since Negative Pressure Wound Therapy - NPWT - has been around for ages. The USSR had some guys working on it, inc. Bagoutdinov). Possibly, it's just vacuuming up nasty crap, keeping the wound moist but not covered in pus. alternatively, it's directing the growth inwards. lastly, it might be creating conditions unfavourable to bacterial colonisation (low pressure, low oxygen, etc)

I was reading up about a patent dispute involving precisely this type of device (connected to an active pump, not this accordion) and the innovation there was a big of sponge placed in the wound (and then the lot is wrapped in clingfilm). The pressure it applies - evenly - also seems to help wound healing, especially by preventing overgrowth, and keeping the clingfilm off the wound itself.

Just something to note if you want to try this at home.

sterilise everything, kids!

it's a main tool in traditional chinese medecine. I am not sure if there were any western scientific studies to understand cupping/suction as done by chinese, but it's been "field-tested" for thousands of years