Heliox

What is heliox?

Heliox is a mixture of oxygen and helium gases. Healthcare providers can use it to treat people who are having trouble breathing, especially in emergency situations. It can decrease the amount of work your body has to do to breathe.

The air around us is a mix of about 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen, plus small amounts of other gases. Similarly, air that healthcare providers give you through a ventilator or oxygen mask is usually a mix of oxygen and nitrogen. Helium is lighter than nitrogen, so using a helium-oxygen mixture can make it easier for air to get through your airways.

Like nitrogen, helium is an inert gas, meaning it doesn’t react with other elements. Your body uses the oxygen from the helium-oxygen mixture and you exhale the helium.

What conditions is heliox used for?

While heliox doesn’t directly treat conditions, providers use it to keep you stable while other treatments have time to work. A provider might use heliox to manage:

• Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
• Airway obstruction. Tumors or foreign bodies can block your airways, making it hard to breathe.
• Status asthmaticus (severe asthma attack).
• COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).
• Decompression sickness (“the bends”). Deep sea divers can get decompression sickness, a condition where accumulated nitrogen in your blood or tissues forms bubbles when you return to the surface.
• Postextubation stridor. If you’ve been intubated (had a tube in your throat), you can have inflammation and stridor — noisy breathing — after your provider removes the tube (extubation).

What happens during heliox treatment?

Providers can deliver heliox gas through a ventilator (which breathes for you while you’re sedated), through a tube that runs under your nose (nasal cannula) or through a mask on your face. A respiratory therapist or physician may adjust the mixture of helium and oxygen to fit your needs and specific situation. Common mixtures include:

• 78% helium/22% oxygen.
• 70% helium/30% oxygen.
• 60% helium/40% oxygen.

How long will I need heliox?

A provider can keep you on heliox until you can breathe well enough on your own, or switch you to a nitrogen-oxygen mixture.

What are the benefits of heliox treatment?

Benefits of heliox over nitrogen-oxygen mixtures include:

• It can help reduce the amount of work your body has to do to breathe.
• It reduces the resistance air faces when getting into your lungs, specifically in your large airways.

What are the disadvantages of heliox?

The biggest disadvantage of heliox is that providers need special equipment and training to use it. Settings and readings on machines that typically deliver nitrogen-oxygen mixtures might be different from what’s expected when using helium-oxygen mixtures. Heliox carries little risk as long as providers are aware of these differences and how to account for them.

How long will it take for me to feel better?

How long it takes to feel better depends on what condition you’re being treated for. The goal of heliox is to help make breathing easier while you heal or receive other treatments.