Oxygen Smart

Portable oxygen machines and specially portable oxygen concentrators have changed the way many people, who must have continuous or semi continuous oxygen therapy, are now living.

It used to be that mobility for COPD patients was severely restricted. This meant being house bound or overly dependent on a hospital or clinic.

With the advent of much more practical and better quality portable machines, patients mobility has increased dramatically and you can now find people on supplemental oxygen doing many things they wouldn’t have imagined just a few years ago.

This has happened because of the new portable tanks, because of more advanced conserving devices (that regulate the delivery rates) and, perhaps the most important reason of all – the introduction of portable oxygen concentrators.

An oxygen concentrator is a machine that extracts oxygen from the surrounding air, it concentrates it and then delivers it – directly to the patient (in a home concentrator machine it can also be used to refill an oxygen cylinder). At sea level and if air pollution is not an issue, ambient air is composed of approximately 21% oxygen, 88% nitrogen and a smaller amount of various gases. The oxygen concentrator extracts oxygen, concentrates it and delivers it to the patient.

Things You Need To Know:

• You need a power source to operate, which can be both with rechargeable batteries and a plug in option (including for vehicle).
• There is a continuous rumble from the concentrators motor.
• You can adjust the flow level according to your prescription.
• There are different models with different weights the give allow for your mobility.
• Always check your battery durability and as a safety precaution you should have a spare and charged battery.

Portable oxygen concentrators arrived on the scene around 2002 and since then have had a great impact in the portable oxygen delivery area.

The major difference between an oxygen concentrator and an oxygen cylinder or tank, is that the concentrator is not a storage device but a supplier of oxygen. This means that so long as the power source is uninterrupted, oxygen will continue to be delivered for as long as needed. In a tank there will always be the limitation based on the amount of oxygen that is stored, whether liquid or gas.

The new designs have both a direct plug in option (so you can plug them in cars, for example) as well as being battery operated. They are smaller, lighter and therefore easier to carry and have a direct and positive effect on peoples mobility.

It seems as if each new model is smaller and has longer lasting rechargeable batteries.

An important benefit is that they have increased the possibility of travel for patients on extra oxygen, and in fact one of the more important aspects of this is that as of May, 2009, the FAA authorized the use of some portable oxygen concentrators on board airlines that cross US airspace (this means all arriving and departing flights). This change is of great consequence as air travel was a major problem. It is still, however, a good idea to check with your airline before a flight.

Although living and having to depend on supplemental oxygen is not something anyone would willingly choose to do, POC’s (portable oxygen concentrators) have really changed people’s lives. The much greater range of activities that can now be practiced, together with increased mobility in general, have had a very positive impact on long term oxygen therapy patients.

For the many thousands of people who depend on supplemental oxygen it is not something they like or something they had looked forward to doing before they were prescribed with additional oxygen. It is however an ever present fact of their lives.

At this stage wishful thinking is worse than useless – it is an excuse not to accept their current health related situation.

Having said that, for a large percentage of people who live with supplemental oxygen, things are much better than they used to be, and perhaps more importantly, than they had imagined. And this is because of new developments in oxygen delivery systems. The developments that relate to design and technical advances, are much more user friendly.

Today a large, in fact a very large, proportion of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) lead much more active lives than they could have twenty or even ten years ago. Home oxygen units were the first major change. Prior to that patients lived with what could be termed as a clinical oxygen dependency. Now home oxygen units are able to supply their oxygen needs with out major problems.

There are three types of oxygen delivery systems for patients that need additional oxygen, and these are:

1. Compressed oxygen tanks -that store oxygen as a gas.
2. Liquid oxygen tanks – storing liquid oxygen tat is then released as a gas.
3. Oxygen concentrators – These are not storage containers but machines that extract oxygen from the surrounding area; the concentrated oxygen is then delivered to the patient.

The result of these developments is that living with supplemental oxygen is much easier than previously and this in a sort of reverse “Catch 22″, means that patients have much more positive attitudes with their overall health status; this in turn gives them the motivation for a more active lifestyle; which makes living with additional oxygen easier – and so on with the cycle.Perhaps the most important advances in oxygen delivery systems is in the portable oxygen area. These same home delivery systems have their equivalent as portable oxygen machines but with the added advantage of design developments that are reflected in size, weight, oxygen durability, and in the case of portable oxygen concentrators, power durability (with both a plug in option and rechargeable batteries).

The ongoing results – ongoing as new and improved models are still coming out – mean that living with supplemental oxygen, though not something desired by anyone, is today much easier and binging with it much greater mobility. This has meant amongst other things that the range of activities available to patients is so much greater that you can achieve a high quality of life in terms of greater freedom and mobility.

As a child I was fixated with Jacques Cousteau, the french marine explorer – innovator – documentary and film maker. And one of the things that always struck me, apart from his accent when pronouncing “Calypso” his ship, was that he had co-developed the aqua-lung. This is the tank contraption that allows divers to breathe underwater with much greater mobility.

A design revolution in its time as it replaced those heavy, cumbersome oxygen suits that were anchored by weights and resembled some sort of deep sea monster from a Jules Verne novel. I always thought of them as the “missing sea link”. They restricted the divers mobility not just because it was difficult to walk under water and therefore the diver could only go down to an accessible depth for walking, but also because air was delivered though a hose connected to an air compressor.

The diver was therefore always connected through a hose to a compressor somewhere above – if something malfunctioned with the compressor…

I suspect that aqua-lungs, developed for our survival under water where we can’t breathe, were the inspiration for the types of oxygen systems that are in use today.

The first portable oxygen units to be made for people who need additional oxygen were in fact tanks filled with compressed oxygen. This was an important innovation as before this patients were dependent on a clinic delivering and supplying oxygen. For those needing oxygen on a full time basis it meant never being able to leave the clinic. A most highly depressing state of affairs.

The good thing about human ingenuity is that when a problem is identified (just a note on a definition of a problem – if there is a solution then it is a problem; if not, it isn’t a problem but a state of affairs that can’t be changed) a solution will be found or developed.

This is what happened for patients who needed oxygen. New solutions were needed and the portable tank, holding compressed oxygen, was made.

Then came a tank carrying liquid oxygen – and this had the advantage of being lighter and holding a much greater amount of oxygen.

Finally during the first decade of this century, oxygen concentrators came into the scene -and the mobility potential they have brought with them represents such a difference in the lives of those who need extra oxygen, that it is hardly comparable.

In the near future there will be more innovations both for tank and cylinder systems and for oxygen concentrators that will be continuously providing more mobility and a higher quality of life. And as always with human nature, the limitations that those before us had to live with will be incomprehensible to us.

But that is good as it means that higher expectations will generate greater results. And perhaps the greatest result these respiratory aids have brought us is a much greater freedom of movement thanks to these portable oxygen machines.