Longer ambulance journeys do not necessarily pose the greatest risk to people with serious respiratory problems, according to the British Lung Foundation.
In response to research published in the Emergency Medicine Journal suggesting longer journeys lead to higher mortality rates, the British Lung Foundation says the amount of oxygen a patient gets while traveling by ambulance can be a more important issue.
“People with respiratory problems often arrive at hospital having been given too much oxygen en route, which can be dangerous and possibly fatal,” says Dr Noemi Eiser, honorary medical director of the British Lung Foundation. “Of course it is important to get people to hospital as quickly as possible, but the treatment they get while traveling is just as vital.”
Too much oxygen can cause people to breathe more slowly, which in turn leads to a potentially dangerous build-up of carbon dioxide.
