Home oxygen therapy in children

Home oxygen therapy may be prescribed for several reasons – to ensure survival and health in a child with a remediable condition; to improve quality of life in a child with an inexorably progressive condition; or to palliate the dying child with symptomatic hypoxaemia. The most common reason is chronic lung disease of the newborn, where oxygen therapy is crucial to maintain safe and normal oxygen saturations, and thereby prevent pulmonary hypertension and allow normal growth and survival. This article reviews the physiology of oxygen therapy and the practicalities of delivering it in a home setting, and identifies some continuing uncertainties.