Dear Smile E.
What’s the best nebulizer machine, preferably quite and quick?
Signed,
Nobody has Time for This
Dear Nobody has Time for This,
The best nebulizer depends on your endgame. What are you looking for is what you have to decide. Fast nebulizers are rarely quite and rarely hold up more than a year with PCD treatment regiments. The quite ones usually break the medication down to the point it destroys the bonds of the medication and renders the medication useless, so you’re basically nebulizing water. Sure you can put the medication is the neb cup and it will mist, but you are breaking the molecular bonds to the point the medication isn’t even the medication anymore. You end up wasting your time and not treating anything. The same goes for mesh nebulizers, they do basic bronchodilators and maybe mucomist, however hypertonic and pulmzyme are basically ruined like water and they destroy the mesh screen in the machine. Inhaled antibiotic solutions gum up the mesh screen and you end up basically replacing them daily or it affects the machine’s performance. Any of the above will affect the life of your machine due to poor performance due to pushing the machine beyond its limits.
Then let’s talk treatment length. While I understand the need to be fast that just isn't realistic. Especially if you are wanting the full effects of the medication and the proper airway clearance. These medications take time to work. Airway clearance takes time if you want it to be effective. Otherwise why are you even bothering. Airway clearance takes commitment, concentration, and dedication. Remember our cilia are broken and they do not do their job. We have to manually do these daily. Think of airway clearance like you do brushing your teeth. You wouldn’t skimp or would you? You need to understand the ramifications of not doing airway clearance effectively. It sucks. I know, from personal experience of over fifty years. To do effective airway clearance, you need to get the medication in the proper way and do the airway clearance techniques to the best of your ability. This is going to take anywhere from twenty to thirty minutes each and every treatment. This requires a workhorse of a nebulizer machine. Rarely portable and or battery operated nebulizer machines can hold up to the time and the workload, they just aren’t designed for it. You can try it, and you can try mesh or the supposedly fast machine; but you will find that they do not hold up. This means replacing them oftentimes a few times a year. Remember most insurance companies will only buy you a new nebulizer machine every five years.
You need a machine made to be a workhorse, like the PARI brand designed for heavy-duty use. Or check with other manufacturers for heavy duty machines made to withstand treatments commonly prescribed for cystic fibrosis. Treatments prescribed for primary ciliary dyskinesia are exact mirror images of those found in cystic fibrosis, in most cases. You can also look in to medical grade air compressors or high grade commercial air compressors. Look I get it, treatments are huge time sucks and they are loud. Unfortunately it goes with the territory. But as I said in the beginning you really need to know your endgame to figure out what and where you want to go when it comes to selection of a nebulizer machine. I suggest that you talk to your PCD respiratory therapist and or your PCD medical team about this issue before purchasing a new device or trying anything suggested here in this website or on the internet in general. Remember be safe.
Yours Truly,
Smile E. Turtle
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***Please speak to your respiratory therapist or your PCD medical team before commencing any new treatment. DO NOT start using a device, or technique, on this website if you have not discussed this with your PCD team first.***
