EDITORIALS
A breath of fresh air for acute oxygen treatment
Correspondence to:
Professor Peter Calverley, Department of Medicine, Clinical Sciences Centre, University Hospital Aintree, Longmoor Lane, Liverpool L9 7AL, UK; pmacal@liverpool.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Oxygen therapy given to acutely ill people is one of the commonest interventions used in modern medicine and has become part of the folklore of our times as a sick patient wearing an oxygen mask is pushed through the emergency department, both in real life and on television. Although the principles of oxygen treatment have been established by painstaking quantitative research over the past 60 years, in practice most people learn to use oxygen by following customary practice in their institution rather than considering rationally how it is best employed. A feeling that some oxygen is good, therefore more must be better, can be a dangerous precept to follow, whereas an unnecessary paranoia about inducing carbon dioxide retention can deny some people potentially life saving treatment. These uncertainties make the arrival of the new British Thoracic Society Guideline for Emergency Oxygen Use in Adults1 particularly welcome. This rather daunting document,
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