The Hazards of Oxygen by John R. Bach, MD
Dr. Bruno’s Original Post: This is from a new article from John R. Bach, MD, who I refer to as the Lord of the Lungs.
The Hazards of Oxygen by John Bach, MD
“One of the most common treatment errors for people with neuromuscular disorders is oxygen therapy, which Bach likens to "putting a Band-Aid on a cancer." He says that oxygen should never be used for people with neuromuscular conditions unless pneumonia has resulted in the need for intubation and intensive care.
Oxygen turns off the brain's drive to breathe and greatly increases the likelihood of ventilatory failure, basically allowing the blood's carbon dioxide to increase to levels that render a person unconscious and cause him to stop breathing entirely (respiratory arrest).
Usually decreases in blood oxygen levels are caused by airway secretions that the patient is not strong enough to clear without training in Bach's methods and the secretions themselves can also result in respiratory arrest.”
About Dr. John Bach: Moving Beyond the Iron Lung
“Bach found his life's work while a resident at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on New York's Roosevelt Island. For years, Goldwater was well known as a facility for polio patients. In the aftermath of the polio epidemic, many polio patients across the country and around the world were kept alive by iron lungs. The iron lung was a large metal cylinder often likened to a coffin. It works like a bellows to "breathe" for its occupant.”
“Physicians at Goldwater took a different approach, exploring other innovative breathing aids. In the 1980s, mouthpiece ventilatory support was used by 270 Goldwater patients with great success. To say patients were greatly relieved to get out of the iron lung was a vast understatement. If these methods worked for polio patients, why not for other patients?”
“In 1981, Bach went to France as a technical advisor and introduced mouthpiece ventilatory support to French colleagues at the University of Poitiers. The physicians then began experimenting with non-invasive nasal ventilation. "We hooked up two urinary drainage catheters to a ventilator and put them in our noses," Bach recalls. "We found they worked very well." They then utilized them on DMD patients for both daytime and nighttime assistance with good results.”
Dr. John Bach is one of the contributing professionals who have written articles about the topic of Anesthesia. The updated Anesthesia Warning Cards can easily be shared with your physician. They have an easy to use QR code that go to articles from multiple sources. The cards are available in both English and Spanish.