Oxygen Therapy in Dogs

What is Oxygen Therapy?

Oxygen therapy is the act of supplementing the air the dog breathes with extra oxygen. This is needed in many situations when the dog has breathing difficulties and struggles to absorb oxygen or transporting that oxygen around the body. Increasing the amount of oxygen the dog breathes in helps counteract the decreased availability of oxygen to the body tissue due to sickness or injury.

Oxygen is vital to life and, depending on the severity of oxygen depletion, the patient may suffer cell death, organ failure, or death. Giving a patient struggling for breath an oxygen supplement can make the difference between life and death. In the critically ill, it is a vital life-saving therapy used to stabilize the dog and make them strong enough to undergo diagnostic tests.

Oxygen Therapy Procedure in Dogs

Although there are several different ways of providing oxygen therapy, they all have one thing in common, which is that it's crucial not to stress the patient. A dog that is fighting for breath could be pushed into a crisis if he struggles during administration of oxygen. With this in mind, the clinician may choose one delivery form over another in order to minimize stress. At all times, the aim is to use the least level of restraint possible.

Options for delivery include:

Flow by oxygen: This is simply allowing oxygen to flow from the delivery pipe into the airspace close to the dog's nose. This may be all that's possible in an extremely stressed patient.

Nasal catheter: A fine tube is passed into the dog's nose and oxygen delivered directly into the respiratory system

Oxygen mask: This means holding a close fitting mask over the dog's face or muzzle.

Oxygen chamber: The clinician may improvise a delivery chamber by fitting the dog with a cone with the wide open diameter sealed over with cling film. A tube feeds into the base of the cone, for higher oxygen concentration within the 'chamber'.

Oxygen tent: This is a sealed chamber in which the whole dog rests and breathes in an oxygen-rich atmosphere

Efficacy of Oxygen Therapy in Dogs

Oxygen therapy can be life-saving and is an essential treatment in many circumstances. However, the very nature of the conditions for which therapy is given mean the patients are high risk and, therefore, some fatalities are inevitable.

Oxygen therapy is a short term treatment, given in order to stabilize the patient so that a workup can be done without causing a crisis. This workup may include taking radiographs or drawing fluid off the chest so that the lungs can expand and breathing can improve.

Oxygen therapy is effective at what it does, delivering oxygen, with some means of delivery being more potent than others. But as mentioned earlier, there is a degree of judgement required to balance the efficacy of the route of delivering oxygen against the risk of stressing the patient.

Oxygen Therapy Recovery in Dogs

Oxygen therapy in itself is not likely to be curative, but a tool used to stabilize patients. Ultimately, their recovery will depend on identifying and treating the underlying cause of their respiratory distress.

The majority of patients who received oxygen therapy do so only for a matter of hours, by which time medications have started to work or the pressure on the lungs has been relieved by other means such as draining fluid off the chest.

It is not generally considered practical or ethical for a pet to receive oxygen therapy at home. Should this be necessary, the dog is unlikely to have a reasonable quality of life and serious welfare issues raised. While portable units for home use are available, this should only be undertaken after close discussion with the treating vet to ensure it is fair to the dog.