A portable hyperbaric bag, of which one brand is the Gamow () bag, is an inflatable pressure bag large enough to accommodate a person. The patient can be placed inside the bag, which is then sealed and inflated with a foot pump. Within minutes, the effective altitude can be decreased by 1000 m to as much as 3000 m (3281 to 9743 feet) depending on the elevation. The bag is pressurised to ; the pressure gradient is regulated by pop-off valves set to the target pressure.

History

The Gamow bag was named after its inventor,

Igor Gamow Rustem Igor Gamow (November 4, 1935, in Georgetown, D.C. – April 15, 2021)Gamow, George: ''My World Line: An Informal Autobiography'', The Viking Press, New York, 1970, page 106. was a microbiology professor at the University of Colorado and inv ...

, son of

George Gamow George Gamow (March 4, 1904 – August 19, 1968), born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov ( uk, Георгій Антонович Гамов, russian: Георгий Антонович Гамов), was a Russian-born Soviet and American polymath, theoreti ...

. Igor Gamow originally designed a predecessor to the Gamow bag called "The Bubble" to study the effect of

high altitude Altitude or height (also sometimes known as depth) is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context ...

on stamina and performance in athletes. Gamow later re-designed "The Bubble" into a bag that could be used in high-altitude wilderness.

Application

It is primarily used for treating severe cases of

altitude sickness Altitude sickness, the mildest form being acute mountain sickness (AMS), is the harmful effect of high altitude, caused by rapid exposure to low amounts of oxygen at high elevation. People can respond to high altitude in different ways. Sympt ...

, Gov't Doc # USARIEM-TN94-2.

high-altitude cerebral edema High-altitude cerebral edema (HACE) is a medical condition in which the brain swells with fluid because of the physiological effects of traveling to a high altitude. It generally appears in patients who have acute mountain sickness and involves di ...

, and

high-altitude pulmonary edema High-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) is a life-threatening form of non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema that occurs in otherwise healthy people at altitudes typically above . However, cases have also been reported between in more vulnerable subjects. ...

. Like office-based

hyperbaric medicine Hyperbaric medicine is medical treatment in which an ambient pressure greater than sea level atmospheric pressure is a necessary component. The treatment comprises hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), the medical use of oxygen at an ambient pressure ...

, the Gamow bag uses increased

partial pressure of oxygen Blood gas tension refers to the partial pressure of gases in blood. There are several significant purposes for measuring gas tension. The most common gas tensions measured are oxygen tension (PxO2), carbon dioxide tension (PxCO2) and carbon monoxi ...

for therapy of hypobaric injury but has the advantage of portability for field use. Patients typically are treated in 1-hour increments and then are reevaluated.

References

{{Bags , state=expanded Bags Mountaineering and health Inflatable manufactured goods

History

Application

See also

References