By All Means

Dr. Aho is a surgeon and scientist with an insatiable appetite for invention and more than 20 patents to his name. He was still in his surgical residency at Mayo Clinic when he spotted an opportunity that led him to develop a medical device now in use around the world. Tension pneumothorax is a life-threatening emergency that occurs when air builds up between the lungs and chest wall. It’s not especially common, but it’s one of those medical situations that TV medical dramas often act out because the way to treat it is to jam a large needle into the chest and wait to hear a gush of air. It occurred to Aho: there had to be a better way. He developed the Capnospot, a device that provides visual confirmation that treatment of tension pneumothorax has been successful. The Capnospot is now standard equipment on ambulances and in emergency rooms everywhere, from Minnesota to Poland. It's the first product to be released by Aho’s parent company, Pneumeric. But it took five years to get here, and challenges persi