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Mitigation may be by supplementary oxygen, pressurisation of the habitat or environmental protection suit, or a combination of both. In all cases the critical effect is the raising of oxygen partial pressure in the breathing gas. [1] Room air at altitude can be enriched with oxygen without introducing an unacceptable fire hazard.
Hyperventilation is irregular breathing that occurs when the rate or tidal volume of breathing eliminates more carbon dioxide than the body can produce. [1] [2] [3] This leads to hypocapnia, a reduced concentration of carbon dioxide dissolved in the blood.
Divers breath a mixture of gases which must include oxygen, and the partial pressure of oxygen in any given gas mixture will increase with depth. Atmospheric air becomes hyperoxic during the dive, and a hyperoxic gas mixture known as nitrox is used to reduce the risk of decompression sickness by substituting oxygen for part of the nitrogen content.
Decompression sickness can occur after an exposure to increased pressure while breathing a gas with a metabolically inert component, then decompressing too fast for it to be harmlessly eliminated through respiration, or by decompression by an upward excursion from a condition of saturation by the inert breathing gas components, or by a ...
As there is an increased risk of central nervous system oxygen toxicity on deep dives, long dives and dives where oxygen-rich breathing gases are used, divers are taught to calculate a maximum operating depth for oxygen-rich breathing gases, and cylinders containing such mixtures should be clearly marked with that depth. [24] [76]
The density of the breathing gas is higher at depth, so the effort required to fully inhale and exhale increases, making breathing more difficult and less efficient (high work of breathing). [13] [3] [18] Higher gas density also causes gas mixing within the lung to be less efficient, thus increasing the effective dead space. [4] [5]
If the concentration of the inert gas in the breathing gas is reduced below that of any of the tissues, there will be a tendency for gas to return from the tissues to the breathing gas. This is known as outgassing, and occurs during decompression, when the reduction in ambient pressure or a change of breathing gas reduces the partial pressure ...
Treatment with supplemental oxygen may improve their well-being; alternatively, in some this can lead to the adverse effect of elevating the carbon dioxide content in the blood (hypercapnia) to levels that may become toxic. [3] [4] With normal lung function, a stimulation to take another breath occurs when a patient has a slight rise in PaCO 2.