Patients who sustain lung damage from traumatic accidents or severe pneumonia now have a chance to heal their lungs while a new device breathes for them.

A team of anesthesiologists and surgeons at the University's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center have begun clinical trials of the IVOX, or intravenous oxygenator, a lung-assist device.

The IVOX was placed in a 34-year-old Philadelphia woman at noon Sunday, but she died at 3 a.m. Monday of pneumoccal pneumonia. The woman had been transferred from a suburban Philadelphia hospital Saturday night by Hershey's Life Lion aeromedical unit.

The medical center did not release the name of the woman.

Although she died 15 hours later, the IVOX helped to sustain the woman's life during the few hours it was used, said Dr. Michael T. Snider, director of the study at Hershey.

"This was a woman with a nearly terminal disease. Unfortunately, her disease was too far advanced to save her," Snider said.

Denine Denlinger, health care science writer at Hershey, said the woman did not respond to normal treatments for pneumonia.

"It had progressed to the point where she had adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS),"she said.

When a patient has ARDS, the lungs have lost the capacity to supply enough oxygen and remove carbon dioxide, a condition known as hypoxia or respiratory failure, Denlinger said. Lack of oxygen causes failure in vital organs such as the heart, brain, liver and kidneys.

This was the second experiment in a series of clinical trials approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The first was performed on a 16-year-old girl from Texas who received the first lung-assist device Feb. 2 at LDS hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. The girl died five days later.

The IVOX has been approved for use in one-week trial periods.

"It is meant to be a temporary device," Denlinger said. "If the lungs are going to improve it will show by then. If not, the patient will probably have died."

Patients are chosen for the use of the IVOX based on strict medical criteria, she said. The device is used only when it is the patient's last hope or last chance for survival.

"Patients who are otherwise healthy but have had some recent acute damage to lungs, for example, through pneumonia or a car accident," Denlinger said.

Snider said, "These young, otherwise healthy patients have only a one in 10 chance of survival because of their severe lung injury. We want to make every effort to give them that one chance they deserve."

ARDS may be caused by pneumonia, chest injuries, bruised lungs or fat embolisms that sometimes occur with broken bones and can damage the lungs, Denlinger said.

Until now the mechanical ventilator had been the only means of breathing for patients with respiratory distress.

"Currently, when patients' lungs fail, we put them on mechanical ventilation. In some cases the lungs become stiff or filled with fluid," Snider said. "We have to pump large amounts of oxygen at high pressure into the lungs to try and supply enough oxygen to the blood."

The increased pressure and concentration of oxygen sometimes damages the lungs even more, Snider added.

"The IVOX is designed to provide additional oxygen to the blood, independent of the lungs," he said.

To do this the IVOX is inserted into the inferior vena cava -- one of the largest veins in the body -- through the neck or thigh. The device is a tiny bundle of several hundred fibers, each about 100th of an inch in diameter. They are coated with silicon rubber and impregnated with heparin, a drug that reduces blood clots, Denlinger said.

As blood flows around the fibers, a mixture of 95 percent oxygen and 5 percent helium is released into the blood and carbon dioxide is removed. A tube connects the IVOX to an external air supply.

The process is similar to gas exchange in the tiny capillaries of the lungs, Denlinger said.

Hershey is one of four centers in the United States approved to participate in the clinical trials. The other centers are: LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City Utah, Los Angeles/University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles and the University of Michigan's Medical Center in Ann Arbor.