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TG students publish in international Intensive Care journal

Under the supervision of Dr. Eline Oppersma and Prof. Dr. Dirk Donker, a group of bachelor students from the Technical Medicine programme recently published an article about the influence of the bed angle on the air retention of the lungs in the renowned scientific journal American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care. "Publishing in this journal is publishing at the Champions League level", says Oppersma.

In the article, students Stijn Geraats, Nicolien Heikens, Chiel Woerts and Arjen Welleweerd introduce their mathematical model, which may be used in the future to predict the angle at which COVID-19 patients should lie in order to receive the best possible ventilation. They developed this model for the Technical Medical Assignment as a completion of their bachelor's.

Own title

The publication was initially intended as a reaction to another article published in the same journal. In that article, the researchers advocated reporting the bed angle in COVID-19 patients, in connection with the effect on lung mechanics during artificial ventilation. The student group's model offered an explanation for this effect, so their supervisor Oppersma decided to submit a reply. "We expected our reply to be published as such, but were surprised that we were allowed to give it its own title," Oppersma says. The original researchers immediately came up with a reply expressing their interest in a full-scale investigation of the model.

More information

The article entitled "Finite Element Modeling of Pulmonary Mechanics in Severe ARDS: Explaining the Inclination Angle?" was published in the scientific journal American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care (impact factor 21.4) and can be read online. Stijn Geraats, Nicolien Heikens, Chiel Woerts and Arjen Welleweerd were supervised by TechMed researcher Dr. Eline Oppersma. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Cardiovascular and Respratory Physiology (CRPH; Faculty of TNW).