Home Oxygen Therapy

For patients with chronic pulmonary or cardiac diseases, there is often a need for oxygen therapy to continue after discharge from hospitalization. Providing oxygen for patients at home has many benefits when given appropriately.

Oxygen supplementation at home includes:

1. Long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) in which oxygen is delivered for patients with chronic hypoxemia, for at least 15 hours daily.

2. Ambulatory oxygen therapy (AOT): Oxygen supplementation during exercise and daily activities for patients who are not hypoxemic at rest but who develop hypoxemia on exercise.

3. Nocturnal oxygen therapy (NOT) in which oxygen administered overnight alone with no oxygen therapy during daytime hours.

4. Short burst oxygen in which a brief and intermittent oxygen supplementation used as needed in the absence of hypoxemia.

5. Palliative oxygen therapy (POT): The use of oxygen for relieving breathlessness in advanced or life-limiting disease in the absence of known hypoxemia.

These methods of oxygen delivery at home have different degrees of supporting evidence.