EDITORIAL
Oxygen therapy in smokers
Got a match? Home oxygen therapy in current smokers
Medical Directors, Respiratory Home Care Programme, Centre de Recherche, Centre de Pneumologie, Hôpital Laval, Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de l’Université Laval, Québec, Canada
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Y Lacasse
Centre de Pneumologie, Hôpital Laval, 2725 Chemin Ste-Foy, Ste-Foy, Quebec, G1V 4G5, Canada; Yves.Lacasse@med.ulaval.ca
The problems of providing home oxygen therapy to active smokers
Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; home oxygen therapy; smoking
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The recent death of two patients registered in our respiratory home care programme stimulated this reflection regarding oxygen therapy in current smokers. Both had oxygen dependent chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and died from severe burns and inhalation injury that occurred while they were receiving oxygen through their home oxygen concentrator. The inquiries revealed that both were smoking when the accidents happened and that their oxygen concentrator was functioning properly.
Contrary to popular belief, oxygen is not explosive. Rather, oxygen accelerates combustion and is therefore an obvious fire hazard. Several reports underlining the risks of burn in patients who smoke while receiving oxygen have been published.1 Reports of death are rare, however. Nevertheless, the proportion of active smokers among patients who receive long term oxygen therapy (LTOT) is almost never mentioned in the current literature. In the few reports that courageously and specifically addressed this issue,
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Currie, G. P, Douglas, J G.
(2006). Oxygen and inhalers.. BMJ
333: 34-36
[Full Text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
