Oxygen Therapy

Oxygen Therapy Increases Vacation Time

Oxygen Therapy Increases Vacation Time

Lung disease requires ongoing treatment to help extend your life and make it better. Oxygen therapy helps deliver oxygen to your lungs so your blood can perform all the necessary tasks within your body. Many patients with COPD or other lung diseases rely on home oxygen to get the correct amount of oxygen. Sadly, many people skip out on travel or vacation because they don’t want their oxygen concentrators to drag them down.

Although you may think that oxygen therapy limits your mobility, this is actually the opposite of the purpose of this form of treatment. It is true that many home concentrators aren’t travel-friendly, but there are alternative forms of oxygen therapy to help get you moving. This is the case whether you take oxygen through a mask or a breathing tube.

Portable oxygen concentrators make it easy to continue your therapy without having to skip out on yet another family vacation. These machines are battery operated, so you don’t need to mess with trying to find an extension cord while enjoying a tropical beach or taking a tour of the Grand Canyon.
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Scott Ridl

History of Oxygen Therapy

History of Oxygen Therapy

Oxygen therapy dates back as far as the 1600s, when physicians of the time used atmospheric pressure to aid the healing of various ailments. Henshaw, a British clergyman, found that air pressure could be manipulated by using organ bellows in a sealed chamber. Chronic conditions seemed to benefit from a drop in pressure and acute conditions seemed to heal faster with increased pressure.

Fontaine, a French surgeon, later created a mobile chamber utilizing Henry’s law, which states that the solubility of a gas in a liquid is equivalent to the pressure of the gas over the solution, as long as no chemical reaction occurs. Fontaine’s chamber increased the patients’ blood oxygen levels while they received nitrous oxide anesthesia.
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Scott Ridl

Common Myths Regarding Oxygen Therapy

By John R. Goodman BS RRT

Have you ever wondered how many of the myths associated with medical therapy get started? This is especially true in the area of oxygen therapy. Although oxygen was first used as a therapeutic agent as far back as 1799, the modern era of oxygen therapy had to wait for the technology to be “invented” so oxygen could be safely and conveniently delivered to the home. For arguments sake, let’s say the modern era of home oxygen therapy began with the introduction of the first oxygen concentrators. This would put us at the beginning of the 1970’s. For the first time patients on home oxygen did not have to give up their garages to store the huge number of bulky and heavy cylinders of oxygen they required. Now that oxygen was becoming easier to supply to patients in the home, it’s not that difficult to see where some of the myths surrounding the use of oxygen got started. Let’s zero in on just a few of the most common myths and see if we can explain how they might have come into existence. Let’s start with the possibility of oxygen exploding.

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Scott Ridl