ABSTRACT: Supplemental or "extra" oxygen is one of the most
widely used therapies for people admitted to the hospital.
It is also frequenly used for patients with chronic lung
disease who live at home. In all cases oxygen is
administered by inhalation. The importance of oxygen therapy
for many patients with heart and lung diseases is now
universally recognized.
Oxygen makes up 21% of the atmosphere we breathe, but it was
not discovered as a separate gas until the late 18th
century. Although oxygen's life-supporting role was
understood early on, it took about 150 years for the gas to
be used in a proper fashion for patients. For the first 150
years after discovery, therapeutic use of oxygen was
sporadic, erratic, controversial, comical, beset by
quackery, and only occasionally helpful. Not until the
pioneering work of Haldane, Stadie, Barcroft and others,
early in the 20th century, was oxygen therapy placed on a
rational, scientific basis. For the first century and a
half, oxygen therapy was characterized by methods that could
not have resulted in much physiologic benefit. Impurities in
oxygen, its use on an intermittent basis, and lack of
physiologic measurement were principal problems.
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