Hypoxemia Causes

Hypoxemia is the condition of having abnormally little oxygen in the blood. The following article will provide you with the details of hypoxemia causes, along with a passing reference to its symptoms and treatment.

Hypoxemia is a severe condition which can disrupt various functions of the human body system, and cause life threatening situation. Basically, this disorder is characterized by a fall in the oxygen level of the blood, which can eventually give rise to a wide range of mild to severe complications. In fact, some of these complications can be severe enough to result in death of the person. Many a times, hypoxemia is confused with hypoxia. While hypoxemia refers to subnormal oxygenation of arterial blood, hypoxia is fall in normal levels of oxygen in arterial blood or tissue. That being said, hypoxemia can eventually cause hypoxia. Before we move on to hypoxemia causes, let's have a brief look at the disorder and its symptoms.

What is Hypoxemia?

Hypoxemia is a medical condition which is typically characterized by very low oxygen levels in the body. The level of oxygen in arterial blood is measured by an oximeter, a small device which is clipped onto the finger. On an average, the normal oxygen level in our blood stream is around 85 mmHg (unit of pressure equal to 0.001316 atmosphere). In people suffering from hypoxemia, this falls down to as low as 60 mmHg. During hypoxemia, the oxygen saturation in the body is less than 90 percent, while the normal requirements are 95 to 100 percent. If the same falls below 80 percent, the condition is referred to as severe hypoxemia. Disorders like anemia are also marked by decrease in amount of oxygen in the blood, but these conditions don't result in fall in partial pressure of oxygen, and this differentiates these two disorders. Some of the most prominent symptoms of hypoxemia include shortness of breath, dizziness, euphoria, fatigue, tingling sensation etc. In course of time, the condition may worsen and cause severe complications such as lack of oxygen to the brain, which may even result in death.

What are the Causes of Hypoxemia?

When we inhale oxygen, it makes its way through the lungs, air sacs, capillaries to the blood stream, from where it is transported to various parts of the body. Any disturbance in this process can disturb the flow, and result in lack of oxygen in the blood. In most of the cases, hypoxemia causes can be traced back to some problem with lung and heart, both of which play a crucial role in transportation of blood throughout the body. These causes include a wide range of health issues, right from some respiratory disorder to carbon monoxide poisoning. Some of the most common hypoxemia causes associated with lungs include airway obstruction, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), pneumonia, pneumothorax etc. On the other hand, the most prominent causes of hypoxemia related to heart functioning include decreased cardiac output, congenital heart disease, etc.

Other than these factors, activities which tend to depress breathing, such as the use of narcotics and anesthetics or high altitude, are also known to trigger hypoxemia. All these causes of hypoxemia can be categorized into various groups on the basis of how they trigger this disorder. This groups are low inspired partial pressure of oxygen (i.e. a fall in the fraction of inspired oxygen), alveolar hypoventilation (i.e. decrease in oxygen levels and increase in carbon dioxide levels of blood), impaired diffusion (i.e. reduction in oxygen movement from alveoli to capillaries), left to right shunt (i.e. the transfer of blood from left side to right side of the heart) and ventilation-perfusion inequality (i.e. difference in volume of gas expired by the alveoli and pulmonary capillary blood).

Hypoxemia treatment is predominantly targeted at the treatment of these underlying causes of the ailment. Some of the most used measures of treatment include include ventilator assisted breathing, prone positioning (which increases oxygenation), oxygen therapy and packed red blood cells transfusion. Owing to the fact that hypoxemia is a serious condition which can trigger loss of life, one has to resort to its treatment at the earliest. The information about hypoxemia causes given below will help you identify the ailment and initiate treatment for it before it worsens.