Book Review: High Altitude Medicine and Physiology

High Life: A History of High-Altitude Physiology and Medicine

This book is the result of an attempt to understand and explain the reaction of women to the pain of childbirth. The author achieves his goal wonderfully! The early history or obstetric anesthesia is explained in marvelous detail, with Simpson, Snow, Meigs, Channing, Queen Victoria, etc. It was the Queen who said "What a blessing she had chloroform," referring to her daughter Victoria's first o...

Lessons from high-altitude physiology

Medicine at high altitude

Medicine at high altitude provides important insights into the acute and chronic effects of hypoxia. Acute mountain sickness (AMS) is a common syndrome occurring after acute ascent to over 2,500 m and is caused by increased capillary permeability. A number of factors have been identified that increase the risk of AMS, in particular exercise. Avoiding rapid ascent, undue exercise and the use of ...

High Altitude Physiology: Cardiac and Respiratory Aspects

Hazel Heckman is absorbed by the identification and general splendor of all living things. She has filled her most recent book with delightful descriptions of life as it is represented in its varied forms on Anderson Island in Puget Sound. Although her attention to wildflowers, weeds, trees, insects, birds, and animals seems a bit excessive, one is easily swept away by her enthusiasm for all of...

High-altitude physiology and pathophysiology: implications and relevance for intensive care medicine

Cellular hypoxia is a fundamental mechanism of injury in the critically ill. The study of human responses to hypoxia occurring as a consequence of hypobaria defines the fields of high-altitude medicine and physiology. A new paradigm suggests that the physiological and pathophysiological responses to extreme environmental challenges (for example, hypobaric hypoxia, hyperbaria, microgravity, cold...