A medical ventilator (or simply ventilator in context) is a machine designed to mechanically move breatheable air into and out of the lungs, to provide the mechanism of breathing for a patient who is physically unable to breathe, or breathing insufficiently.
While modern ventilators are computerized machines, patients can be ventilated with a bag valve mask, a simple hand-operated machine. After Hurricane Katrina, dedicated staff "bagged" patients in New Orleans hospitals for days with simple bag valve units attached to endotracheal tubes, a "ventilator" system which can be used with no definite time limit.
Ventilators are chiefly used in intensive care medicine, home care, and emergency medicine (as standalone units) and in anesthesia (as a component of an anesthesia machine).
Medical ventilators are sometimes colloquially called "respirators," a term which stems from commonly used devices in the 1950's (particularly the "Bird Respirator"). However, in modern hospital and medical terminology, these machines are never referred to as respirators, and use of "respirator" in this context is now a deprecated anachronism which signals technical unfamiliarity.
Read more about Medical Ventilator: Function, History, Biphasic Cuirass Ventilation
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“As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)