Oxygen therapy study raises serious questions

Giving too much oxygen to extremely sick patients could be doing more harm than good, new research has found.

Groundbreaking research has revealed high levels of oxygen administered to acutely sick patients in hospital could increase the risk of patient death by 21 per cent.

Wellington Hospital Intensive Care specialist Dr Paul Young and coauthor of the report which supports a conservative use of oxygen therapy said the latest research dispelled the belief that no amount of oxygen was harmful.

The practice of administering oxygen was first introduced in 1885 and was often given to patients to reverse the affects of hyperoxaemia, an abnormally low concentration of oxygen in the blood. In other cases it was seen as a harmless and beneficial therapy.

But Young, who worked with researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, found some levels were safer than others and that it should only be given to patients whose oxygen levels were low.

“They [the findings] in fact show that administering too much oxygen is potentially harmful, even deadly.”

The oxygen therapy research has been published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

The research was based on 25 worldwide trials involving 16,000 patients over 18 years old with sepsis, stroke, trauma, emergency surgery or cardiac arrest.