A Brief Analysis of the Working Principle of a Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber

　　Oxygen is carried by the blood. Once oxygen enters the lungs, it immediately dissolves into the bloodstream—a process much like dissolving a spoonful of sugar in water very quickly. In a healthy person, the amount of oxygen dissolved in the blood is related to the ambient pressure. Since we live in an environment at one atmospheric pressure and the oxygen content in air accounts for only one-fifth of the total, the amount of oxygen dissolved in human blood is relatively small and insufficient to meet the body’s needs.

 

　　Oxygen readily enters red blood cells and is transported along with them as they move throughout the body. Although the amount of oxygen dissolved in the blood is relatively small, it plays a crucial role. Since red blood cells carry dozens of times more oxygen than is dissolved in the blood itself, healthy individuals can easily meet their oxygen demands through this mechanism. Consider the hyperbaric oxygen experiment conducted in 1956 by scientists in the Netherlands: They drew blood from a pig’s arteries, then injected saline solution into its veins, after which they placed the pig into a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and subjected it to an oxygen pressure of three atmospheres. The pig survived for 15 minutes in this chamber. After the blood was reintroduced into the pig’s body, it continued to thrive. The pig had been sustained solely by the dissolved oxygen in its blood. The scientists dubbed this phenomenon “life without blood.” Following numerous subsequent experiments, they concluded that the amount of oxygen dissolved in the blood increases as the pressure inside the hyperbaric chamber rises. In a chamber maintained at two atmospheres of pressure, inhaling pure oxygen caused the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the blood to increase by a factor of 14; at three atmospheres, the increase reached as much as 21 times.