The provision of oxygen – and its supply chain – has been at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19. Yet it has always been one of the most important, life-saving gases used in medicine, since the 1800s in fact – so what is ‘supplemental oxygen’ and how is it used?
Put simply, supplemental oxygen – or oxygen therapy – is the use of oxygen as a medical treatment. In short-term procedures or treatments, this might include the use of oxygen to remedy low blood oxygen levels, to overcome carbon monoxide poisoning or to maintain a patient’s oxygen levels while under an anaesthetic during an operation.
In long-term cases, oxygen treatment has been increasingly called upon in the fight against known and ongoing respiratory diseases like COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder) or other lung diseases where chronically low oxygen levels are restrictive at best and life-endangering at worst. Portable oxygen delivery devices to meet these needs have been a fast-growing application for those in the gas and equipment business.
On a more technical level, oxygen is required for normal or healthy cell metabolism, the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. For humans, the intake of oxygen from the air is the essential purpose of respiration – the inhalation of oxygen from the outside environment to the cells within tissues and the exhalation of carbon dioxide in the same process – so oxygen supplementation is used in various branches of medicine. Treatment not only increases oxygen levels in the patient’s bloodstream, but has the secondary effect of decreasing resistance to blood flow in many types of diseased lungs, easing the workload on the heart. Oxygen saturation is key and can vary on the treatment being given; just as oxygen is required for core functions and to overcome the presence of carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide in a given circumstance, excessively high concentrations can cause oxygen toxicity or lung damage.
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