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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 ...
Safer use can involve inhalation while seated to decrease risks of injury by falling. Inhalation directly from a tank poses serious health risks, as it can cause frostbite since the gas is very cold when released. For those reasons, most recreational users will discharge the gas into a balloon or whipped cream dispenser before inhaling. [7]
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.
It has been used in medicine since the use of oxygen therapy. [1] Most of these gases are drugs, including oxygen. [2] Many other gases, collectively known as factitious airs, were explored for medicinal value in the late eighteenth century. In addition to oxygen, medical gases include nitric oxide (NO), and helium-O2 mixtures (Heliox).
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.
Liquid breathing is a form of respiration in which a normally air-breathing organism breathes an oxygen-rich liquid which is capable of CO 2 gas exchange (such as a perfluorocarbon). [ 1 ] The liquid involved requires certain physical properties, such as respiratory gas solubility, density, viscosity, vapor pressure and lipid solubility, which ...
Inhalation of air, as part of the cycle of breathing, is a vital process for all human life. The process is autonomic (though there are exceptions in some disease states) and does not need conscious control or effort. However, breathing can be consciously controlled or interrupted (within limits).