EDITORIAL

Oxygen therapy

Is it time to change the approach to oxygen therapy in the breathless patient?

Richard Beasley¹, Sarah Aldington², Geoffrey Robinson²

¹ Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand and University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
² Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor Richard Beasley
Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, P O Box 10055, Wellington, New Zealand; Richard.Beasley@mrinz.ac.nz

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The need to highlight the risks of high flow oxygen in clinical teaching

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The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In a recent commentary we argued that the traditional representation of the haemoglobin oxygen dissociation curve developed by physiologists may be disconcerting for clinicians because of the prominence of the steep slope of oxygen desaturation with falling oxygen tension.¹ We proposed that a different alignment may be preferable for clinicians in demonstrating its beneficial characteristics, enhancing both the "pick up" of oxygen despite cardiorespiratory disease and the "drop off" of oxygen to the tissues despite falling oxygen saturation (fig 1). It was hoped that, through a different perspective of the haemoglobin oxygen dissociation curve, it might be possible to overcome the ingrained practice of doctors, nurses and paramedics to prescribe high flow oxygen to breathless patients who do not necessarily have arterial hypoxaemia.^2–4 However, such a change of long established practice would also require a recognition of the risks of inappropriate high flow oxygen therapy.^5,6

View larger version (8K):   Figure 1  Left: Traditional . . . [Full text of this article]

 

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• O'Driscoll, B R, Howard, L S, Davison, A G, on behalf of the British Thoracic Society, (2008). BTS guideline for emergency oxygen use in adult patients. Thorax 63: vi1-vi68 [Full Text]  
• Fox, B D (2008). Oxygen therapy in the breathless patient. Thorax 63: 476-476 [Full Text]