More Oxygen post Surgery
Anesthesiology
Doctors have worried that extra oxygen might make the lungs more likely to collapse. However, he said, a study of his last year in the journal Anesthesiology found no difference in the percentage of such collapses on high and normal doses of oxygen.
There was also an unexpected benefit - patients who got extra oxygen were half as likely to be nauseated after surgery.
The study was conducted at the Donauspital in Vienna, Vienna General Hospital and University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.
Scientists already knew that the white blood cells known as neutophils use oxygen to kill germs. And they knew that high levels of oxygen in body tissues help prevent infection and that breathing higher levels of oxygen put more oxygen into the tissues. What they did not know was whether it made a difference in patients' healing.
"This shows it's not just a theoretical benefit but a real benefit, and that it's much greater than you might have expected," Sessler said. "It's an enormous benefit for no cost and effort and risk."
The study looked at bowel surgery patients because they have the highest risk of infection. The findings might have even greater implications for burn units, since infections cause most deaths there, said Tung, head of his hospital's burn unit.
"If I had a wish list of another study I'd like to see, I'd like to see the effect of this on preventing infections other than wound infections," he said. "Or whether oxygen therapy might be used to speed healing" of other infections.
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