What is oxygen therapy?

Respiratory Therapist Wendy Cheng 2010/5/21

Every cell in your body needs oxygen to work properly. Some medical conditions make it harder for the body to get the oxygen into the lungs and you may feel breathless because your body is working harder. Oxygen therapy is a way to give you some extra oxygen and the main aim is to treat the low amounts of oxygen in your blood stream (also called hypoxemia) and bring them up to normal levels.

Do I need oxygen?

If you do not get enough oxygen, you may feel breathless or become tired. However, it is also possible to have a low oxygen level without any symptoms. You can also be breathless and have a normal oxygen level. So there are two types of oximetry are used to know whether you have a low oxygen level and need oxygen therapy:

1.      Hemoximetry:

Hemoximeter is a laboratory analytical procedure which can analyze saturation of arterial blood (SaO2) and compute the relative concentrations of multiple hemoglobin species, such as Hb, HbO2, HbCO, and metHb. This procedure requiring invasive sampling of arterial blood for at least 40-200μL and is used in ICU and other clinical practices.

2.     Pulse oximetry:

Pulse oximeter is an inexpensive and portable non-invasive monitoring device that provides estimates of arterial blood hemoglobin saturation levels with a probe rest on your finger and does not hurt. No other device in recent medical history has been so widely and quickly adopted into clinical practice. As not to confuse these estimates with actual SaO2 measured by hemoximetry, the abbreviation SpO2 is used to refer to pulse oximetry readings.

Symptoms of hypoxemia

Common problems with oxygen therapy

v     Postoperative patients

v     Trauma

v     Cor pulmonale

v     Acute myocardial infarction

v     Carbon monoxide poisoning

v     Cyanide poisoning

v     Shock

v     Hypoxemia