My grandma recently started requiring supplemental oxygen at home and the nurse told my family to ensure her SP02 isn’t maintained for long periods of time over 95% because this can lead to oxygen toxicity. She is on a medical grade oxygen concentrator which I have read provides approximately 90-95% pure oxygen. (She uses 1-2 concentrators to provide 4-10lpm as needed to maintain SP02 between 90-95%) How does oxygen toxicity work and how quickly can it occur in a situation like this? Articles I have found online are a bit over my head. Thanks!
In: Biology
I don’t understand it really either. But, don’t ignore what they are warning you about as far as too much oxygen goes. Apparently it aggravates COPD. My wife wouldn’t listen and it didn’t end well.
Does she have COPD? If so the concern is more about CO2 retention. Maybe she meant dependency? Though with home O2 she’s already there, but as far as preventing her needing more. And is she using a regular nasal cannula? Those only deliver up to 6 LPM, about 44% oxygen, compared to 21% in the normal air we breathe.
Edit: we usually think of toxicity with people needing high %, not with chronic supplementation. If I get a chance at work tomorrow I’ll look at UptoDate. There’s a good looking study that I can access from there. I’m an ICU nurse so it will be good to know a little more about it anyway 🙂
Oxygen is a so-called free radical. Oxygen really likes reacting with whatever’s around. This also includes your cells and their proteins. High oxygen concetrations can disrupt cell function by binding to proteins. This causes a change of their properties and is generally not very healthy, it can also cause DNA damage for example. The body is expecting a certain amount of oxygen and can repair damage caused by it to the extent we are exposed to it normally. When we get older or there is too much oxygen the damage cannot be repaired well enough and leads to issues.
Here’s a link if you want to know more about this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_oxygen_species
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