Kings College Aerospace Medicine Group, London
Royal Air Force Centre of Aviation Medicine
A comparison of acute Hypoxia induced by low concentrations of oxygen at ground level, 10,000 feet and by air at 25,000 feet.
George Evetts, Alice Hartley, Simon Keane, James Keegan, Andrew Simpson, Alison Taylor, Alec Hurley and John Ernsting.
Acute hypoxia is a danger to all aviators. All military aircrew are given personal hypoxia experience in a hypobaric chamber as part of ground crew training, which is refreshed every 3-5 years. Current concerns with this training are the risks of developing decompression sickness (DCS). Other methods of training employing the use of reduced concentrations of oxygen at ground level and at 10,000ft in a decompression chamber have been considered. The latter was proposed by Cable and is used for hypoxia training in the Royal Australian Air Force. It has the advantage over ground level hypoxia in that it allows aircrew to experience the effects of low environmental pressure. Both methods have been investigated only once and require further validation.
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