How to Use iron lung in a Sentence

iron lung

noun
  • Parents lived in fear their children would end up in an iron lung.
    Helen Branswell, STAT, 23 Apr. 2018
  • Many of those who are still living today are in a wheelchair, and a few are still in an iron lung.
    Sara Reardon, Scientific American, 19 Aug. 2022
  • The process by which the iron lung functioned was simple and effective.
    Stephen C. George, Discover Magazine, 10 Aug. 2023
  • At the time, about 80 percent of bulbar polio patients died comatose in the iron lung.
    Bradley M. Wertheim, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 June 2020
  • In March 2023, he was declared the longest surviving iron lung patient in the world by the Guinness World Records.
    Mira Cheng, CNN, 13 Mar. 2024
  • External devices, such as the iron lung, were in short supply.
    Clayton Dalton, The New Yorker, 27 May 2020
  • The most ill patients were placed in an iron lung to assist their respiration.
    Dawn Mitchell, Indianapolis Star, 29 May 2020
  • There was great fear that your child would be struck down by polio, that your child would be paralyzed, and that your child would have to be placed in an iron lung.
    Maralyn Mosley, al, 20 Jan. 2021
  • It is believed only two people in the United States use an iron lung today.
    Marc Bona, cleveland, 8 June 2020
  • Instead of being imprisoned by the medical device that keeps him alive, the man in the iron lung has used it as a springboard to thrive.
    David Kindy, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Nov. 2021
  • Today, Alexander is thought to be one of only two people still using an iron lung, reports the Guardian.
    David Kindy, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Nov. 2021
  • This essay is adapted from a longer version that details the development of the iron lung.
    Hannah Wunsch, STAT, 22 Aug. 2021
  • Those who survived the virus might be left using crutches, confined to a wheelchair, or needing an iron lung.
    Allison Futterman, Discover Magazine, 12 Dec. 2021
  • What else: In another section of the attraction, an iron lung is now on display.
    Dewayne Bevil, Orlando Sentinel, 18 June 2024
  • Others were consigned to life in an iron lung, a type of ventilator that encased a child’s body to ease breathing.
    New York Times, 25 Dec. 2020
  • Kaufer’s old enough to remember the polio epidemic, and visiting a close friend in an iron lung.
    Los Angeles Times, 9 May 2020
  • The iron lung, invented in the late 1920s, was large and cumbersome, requiring the patient to lie inside the contraption up to their neck.
    Fox News, 1 Apr. 2020
  • The machines, first introduced in 1928, were initially called iron lungs and used to help polio patients breathe.
    Olivia Carville, Bloomberg.com, 10 May 2020
  • Unable to breathe on his own, he was placed in an iron lung, a large metal cylinder that varies air pressure to stimulate breathing.
    Alexandra Banner, CNN, 14 Mar. 2024
  • As a young teacher in Coffeyville, Brosseau, spent months tutoring a student with polio who was living with an iron lung.
    Mará Rose Williams, kansascity, 5 June 2018
  • By Monday morning, newspapers carried the sad news that Westwater had lost her fight for life after four days in an iron lung.
    Mara Bovsun, New York Daily News, 21 Apr. 2024
  • Before the iron lung was deployed, however, doctors worried about its use.
    Hannah Wunsch, STAT, 22 Aug. 2021
  • Children would eagerly begin their school breaks with a bicycle, scooter or kite and end them in crutches, braces or an iron lung.
    Ainissa Ramirez, Scientific American, 17 June 2021
  • One state-of-the-art iron lung ventilator, and a few older, mostly impotent, devices.
    Bradley M. Wertheim, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 June 2020
  • Newspapers ran images of children struggling in leg braces or lying prostrate in iron lungs.
    Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Washington Post, 4 May 2020
  • Getting patients into and out of early iron lungs was cumbersome.
    Stephen C. George, Discover Magazine, 10 Aug. 2023
  • Tools such as the iron lung saved thousands of polio victims’ lives when the disease caused respiratory failure.
    Christian Millman, Discover Magazine, 22 Oct. 2019
  • Alexander admits in the Guardian article that adjusting to life in the iron lung was extremely difficult.
    David Kindy, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Nov. 2021
  • Roughly 5-10% of patients who caught paralytic polio died, although this number was far higher in the days before widespread use of the iron lung.
    Krista Stevens, Longreads, 26 May 2020
  • Hospitals established polio wings for iron lung machines to keep the lungs pumping oxygen.
    Dawn Mitchell, Indianapolis Star, 16 Mar. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'iron lung.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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