3 ms·

There are two ways to increase the partial pressure of oxygen: either raise the overall pressure, or increase the concentration of oxygen (at the expense of nit

There are two ways to increase the partial pressure of oxygen: either raise the overall pressure, or increase the concentration of oxygen (at the expense of nitrogen concentration, surely). Assuming a change in nitrogen partial pressure isn't going to interfere with things, I'd have to agree, there's not an obvious difference between the two. Maybe the researchers used a hyperbaric chamber just because they had access to a hyperbaric chamber.

ajb 5y ago
A hyperbaric chamber treatment generally does both, so raises the partial pressure more than you could without it. And indeed that is what they did here.
sbierwagen 5y ago
>Assuming a change in nitrogen partial pressure isn't going to interfere with things That may not be safe to assume! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1130736/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1130736/ >The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure >Nitrogen has recognized narcotic potential at hyperbaric pressures. No narcotic effect of helium has been demonstrated at any pressure. We evaluated the effect of nitrogen in air at one atmosphere on human performance by comparing it with helium-oxygen using a four-alternative divided-attention task that requires rapid response to auditory and visual signal changes. There was a 9.3 per cent decrease in response time when subjects breathed helium-oxygen, a significant change (P less than 0.001). This change could not be ascribed to practice since the order of presentation of gases did not have a significant effect. It concluded that the nitrogen in ambient air slightly but measurable impairs human performance compared with a non-anesthetic gas such as helium.