O2 for heart attack not necessarily a good idea

Submitted by Carl Weil on

Carl Weil's picture

O2 for AMI with pulse ox of 94%

Giving O2 is not as simple as we were lead to believe in the past. As back country care givers, we rarely have O2.  The American Heart Association’s emergency cardiac care guidelines have, since 2010, recommended as follows: There is insufficient evidence to support [oxygen’s] routine use in uncomplicated ACS. If the patient is dyspneic, hypoxemic or has obvious signs of heart failure, providers should titrate therapy, based on monitoring of oxyhemoglobin saturation, to 94% (Class I, LOE C).4
Take home point O2 not needed if pulse ox of 94% or higher

Subject: [W-EMED] Oxygen bad for MI? There has never been any evidence that oxygen was good for MI. Now there is at least a bit of evidence that it's bad:
Stub, D., et al. (2015). "Air Versus Oxygen in ST-Segment-Elevation Myocardial Infarction." Circulation 131(24): 2143-2150.

1 Comment

Jeffrey Baker's picture

Assess your patient!

Submitted by Jeffrey Baker on

Although new to the WMO website, as an RN with 6 years of ER experience between being a CNA and RN in trauma centers, this makes sense to me. The reason this makes sense goes back to the basics. Basic step 1 is to assess your patient and the situation. This appears to be much like bleeding in that, if the patient is not bleeding on the outside, then they don't need a band-aid. Like wise, if the patient looks pink, is warm, and can carry on a conversation with 94% or above SpO2, then the body is not trying to compensate for lack of O2 or excess CO2, therefore adding more O2 can be either useless and a waste, or counter productive by putting the patient at risk for lung damage due to too much pure O2. The above AHA statement makes good sense to me.