University College London (UCL) is hosting a conference on Wednesday 27 April 2005 to explore the parallels between extreme environment physiology and intensive care in hospitals. Talks will cover the history and future of high altitude research and explain how lessons learnt from life at the very limit might teach us something about every day healthcare.

Conference speakers include some of the leading authorities in the world of high altitude physiology and critical care including Everest summiteer Dr Sundeep Dhillon, intensive care consultant and mountaineer Dr Hugh Montgomery and Nick Lane, author of the book 'Oxygen: the Molecule that Made the World'.

The afternoon session will cover the recently announced Xtreme-Everest expedition (http://www.xtreme-everest.co.uk), detailing the plans of a team of UCL doctors from the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE) to scale the world's tallest mountain and take the first ever measurements of arterial blood oxygen at the summit. Researchers plan to measure the amount of oxygen in their own blood along with running a battery of investigations to test their brains, lungs and muscles at this extreme altitude.

At 8,850 metres, Mount Everest represents one of the most austere terrestrial environments the world has to offer, so much so that physiologists once believed it would be impossible to survive at the summit without supplemental oxygen. But the experiences of mountaineers following in the footsteps of Reinhold Messener and Peter Habler, the first men to summit on Everest without supplemental oxygen, have proved them wrong. Confronted with physiological and environmental extremes a few remarkable people are somehow able to adapt and find the will to climb this mountain. But how in this seemingly lethal hypoxic environment is it possible?

For a molecule upon which all human life depends our understanding of oxygen
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Contact: Jenny Gimpel
j.gimpel@ucl.ac.uk
44-207-679-9739
University College London
22-Apr-2005

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