Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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 ...
The risk of breathing asphyxiant gases is frequently underestimated leading to fatalities, typically from breathing helium in domestic circumstances and nitrogen in industrial environments. [12] The term asphyxiation is often mistakenly associated with the strong desire to breathe that occurs if breathing is prevented.
Inhaling helium can be dangerous if done to excess, since helium is a simple asphyxiant and so displaces oxygen needed for normal respiration. [28] [186] Fatalities have been recorded, including a youth who suffocated in Vancouver in 2003 and two adults who suffocated in South Florida in 2006.
The AOL.com video experience serves up the best video content from AOL and around the web, curating informative and entertaining snackable videos.
The two foremost reasons for use of mixed breathing gases are the reduction of nitrogen partial pressure by dilution with oxygen, to make nitrox mixtures, to reduce nitrogen uptake during pressure exposure and accelerate nitrogen elimination during decompression, and the substitution of helium (and occasionally other gases) for the nitrogen to ...