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Jacob Fine, MD
Harvard University School of Public Health Cambridge, Mass

JAMA. 1979;241(16):1686.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

A letter on air embolism in THE JOURNAL (240:1713, 1978) is informative on the pressure gradients that produce it. However, like other previous letters I have encountered on this subject in this and other journals, little or nothing is said on how to deal with the disorder once it is recognized. In the mid-1930s, I, along with several collaborators, published a series of articles stressing the principle that the inhalation of pure oxygen rapidly reduces the partial pressure of nitrogen in the blood as well as in the alveoli, and so allows the nitrogen in the embolized air to be exhaled.^1-5

This principle, which, I gather, continues to be ignored, was used not only for air embolism, but also to relieve tension in mediastinal or subcutaneous emphysema, in the cerebral ventricles following ventriculography, and for severe gaseous distension of the intestine as well as for air . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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