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Heliox is a breathing gas mixture of helium (He) and oxygen (O 2).It is used as a medical treatment for patients with difficulty breathing because this mixture generates less resistance than atmospheric air when passing through the airways of the lungs, and thus requires less effort by a patient to breathe in and out of the lungs.
A breathing gas is a mixture of gaseous chemical elements and compounds used for respiration. Air is the most common and only natural breathing gas. Other mixtures of gases, or pure oxygen, are also used in breathing equipment and enclosed habitats such as scuba equipment, surface supplied diving equipment, recompression chambers, high-altitude mountaineering, high-flying aircraft, submarines ...
The dry air on the Earth we inhale consists of 78.8% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen and 0.93% argon. Heliox therapy is substitution of nitrogen with helium. Helium itself has no pharmacological value, it does not react in the body. Its only purpose is to make the flow less turbulent and help oxygen to get into the lungs.
Depending on the proportions of helium and nitrogen, these gases are called heliox if there is no nitrogen, or trimix if there is nitrogen and helium along with the essential oxygen. [33] [34] The inert gases used as substitutes for nitrogen have different solubility and diffusion characteristics in living tissues to the nitrogen they replace.
The helium dilution technique is the way of measuring the functional residual capacity of the lungs (the volume left in the lungs after normal expiration). This technique is a closed-circuit system where a spirometer is filled with a mixture of helium (He) and oxygen. The amount of He in the spirometer is known at the beginning of the test ...
Nitrous oxide ("laughing gas") has been used recreationally since 1899 for its ability to induce euphoria, hallucinogenic states and relaxation, and is legal in some countries. Helium can be inhaled to give the voice a reedy, duck-like quality, but this can be dangerous as the gas is an asphyxiant and displaces the oxygen needed for normal ...
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A store of oxygen, usually as compressed gas in a high pressure cylinder, but sometimes as liquid oxygen, that feeds gaseous oxygen into the ambient pressure breathing volume, either continuously, or when the user operates the oxygen addition valve, or via a demand valve in an oxygen rebreather, when the volume of gas in the breathing circuit ...