A non-drug way to fix broken lungs

[Roostercat]

So, one of medical's big problems, at least for me, is the fact that EVERYTHING is entirely reliant on either surgery or drugs. Broken lung? Pneumalin or surgery. Broken heart? Api or surgery (though Asystole has the defib now). It creates the assembly line effect and in general, gets pretty repetitive. 

 

I think the way to get around this is to start adding other ways to treat the same thing that physicians can do, both because it actually gives physicians something to do and because variety is the spice of life, especially if the new thing is actually more effective and pneumalin is now the backup. 

 

Thus, my suggestion. I think we should add a chest pump machine to Aurora. In real life, these are used to remove air from the space outside your lungs so that they are able to expand again and is a common treatment for Pneumo/hemothorax. Since this is a video game, we can just say it also repairs damage to the lung while it is at it, or maybe differentiate between pneumothorax from no oxygen and pneumothorax from a bullet. Overall I think it would be neat to have an alternative, physician-friendly way to treat one of the most common injuries we have.  

 

Hell, I could probably even have a go at spriting it and commissioning a coder since I have no idea how it would work, but I want to gauge people's impression of it first.

[wowzewow]

Though I think this is an okay idea, as a developer I can't really condone adding a new machine entirely dedicated to a single tailor-made purpose of just fixing lungs. This just makes more stuff that's required to map in.

However, I wouldn't mind having more *alternative* pathways whilst using existing things. A great example of this is being able to use syringes to re-inflate collapsed lungs.

I think adding a new respirator function to sleeper beds/stasis beds would be a better implementation. Hell, maybe tweak cryogenics again for once so it's actually useful for once and not ignored completely.

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by wowzewow

[TonesofBones]

In my opinion, a third way of fixing lungs isn't really needed, because:

1. If there is a surgeon present, let them do the surgery thing. They are more qualified than physicians (IC reason) and it's the main reason why they are playing a surgeon (OOC reason) .

2. If there are no surgeons, physicians are qualified to fix lungs via surgery anyways.

BUT

I like the idea of a machine that would reinflate ruptured lungs and/or purge reagents from them. It's the XXV century. We should have better tech for it than just syringes. And a purge function would be handy to speed up recovery from being blasted with drugs by a malfunctioning scrubber.

 

38 minutes ago, wowzewow said:

I think adding a new respirator function to sleeper beds/stasis beds would be a better implementation.

I mean, there is an EPP function on stabilizer vests and IVs with air tanks on them.

 

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by TonesofBones
minor stylistic changes

[GeneralCamo]

Cryo tubes should already be able to handle minor damage to lungs. If this isn't the case, then they are definitely broken and will need fixing.