BMJ 1995;311:629 (2 September)

Letters

Treatment of acute mountain sickness

EDITOR,--Hans-Rudolf Keller and colleagues recommend descent as the treatment of choice for acute mountain sickness but show that both treatment in a portable hyperbaric chamber and administration of dexamethasone (which was the superior treatment) may facilitate descent by improving symptoms.1 Pressurisation produced only short term benefit. A previous controlled trial of treatment in a portable hyperbaric chamber by the same group also failed to show any long term benefit of pressurisation in people with acute mountain sickness.2 Spending longer in the pressure bag has not been shown to confer additional benefit.3

Despite the lack of long term efficacy the use of portable hyperbaric chambers has become widespread, and much has been made in the lay press4 of the anecdotal reports of symptomatic relief to which Keller and colleagues refer.1 In Britain this popularisation of "the life saving pressure bag" has resulted in trekking agencies feeling under pressure to make sure . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Simulated descent v dexamethasone in treatment of acute mountain sickness: a randomised trial
Hans-Rudolf Keller, Marco Maggiorini, Peter Bartsch, and Oswald Oelz
BMJ 1995 310: 1232-1235. [Abstract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Hurst, S. D., Seymour, B. W. P., Muchamuel, T., Kurup, V. P., Coffman, R. L. (2001). Modulation of Inhaled Antigen-Induced IgE Tolerance by Ongoing Th2 Responses in the Lung. J. Immunol. 166: 4922-4930 [Abstract] [Full text]  
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ