Adit Ginde, MD, already had a hunch that most hospitalized trauma patients were receiving too much oxygen, but when the U.S Department of Defense came to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus looking for solutions to problems around battlefield oxygen, he saw the chance to put his theory to the test. 

“Scientists from Special Operations Command made a campus visit through the CU Anschutz Center for Combat Medicine and Battlefield Research, and one of the topics they brought up was difficulties in delivering oxygen to frontline battlespace areas,” says Ginde, professor and vice chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “They said it was one of their most pressing logistical issues because they have to plan whole medical missions around when the oxygen runs out, when they need to refill the tanks. It's a huge issue.” 

Ginde, who was already concerned that giving trauma patients too much oxygen was leading to harmful effects, developed a pair of multi-site studies to investigate the safety and effectiveness of giving trauma and burn patients smaller amounts of supplemental oxygen — or, in some cases, none at all. It didn’t take much convincing, Ginde says, as leaders from trauma surgery, emergency medicine, and critical care from the study sites, as well as other national experts and military experts, were thinking along the same lines.

Read the full story at CU Anschutz News >>>