does the FLUTE help?

[26245]

Has anybody seen, heard about or used this? It's a long tube which is supposed to send vibrations into your airways when you breathe into it, and in doing so pry loose the mucus from your lungs and help you get rid of it. From what I can see (http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/health/your_health&id=8942927 ; http://www.lungflute.com/copd-reference-center.php#usage) it can't hurt, and it's supposed to be relatively cheap, about 50 dollars, but I don't want to buy it if it's snake oil. Any advice, opinion will be appreciated. I am now stage 4 (FEV1 down to 27) and definitely need all the help I can get....

[26245]

I'm not thinking only of my own predicament, more in general, if this new contraption really helps expectorate it should be the talk of the town! cartfuls of sticky gooey mucus being one of the most damning aspects of this disease and sometimes during flareups you feel like the buildup is going to choke you... so I was hoping somebody could say whether or not it's worth buying this thing based on first-hand experience. And it if does help, it's funny that it's not used very widely at this point. There's something fishy here. FDA approval does not mean much in my eyes, seeing that they approve of deadly things like gardasil ... but that's a different story.  Good luck to everybody and thank you to Dr Tinkelman.

[David Tinkelman, M.D.]

A lung flute is a medical device used to clear mucus from congested lungs with low-frequency sound waves. The device consists of a mouthpiece and a plastic reed which vibrates within a chamber to create sound waves in the chest cavity. These sound waves vibrate and break up mucus deposits in the lungs, which are then coughed out.  Lung flutes have been approved by the FDA.
Whether this will help you with your Stage 4 COPD is difficult to tell.  I would suggest speaking with your Pulmonolgist to see if it is worth the expense and effort for you.