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Mountaineering medics

COMPILED BY SUBAJAYANTHI B.

HIGH ALTITUDE: Ideal laboratory.

Researching intensive care medicine on Mount Everest? For a group of doctors from University College, London, it represents the ideal laboratory. These mountaineering medics are interested in the effects of oxygen deprivation on the body — a critical problem for ICU patients — so what better location than the highest point on earth, where there is just one-third the amount of oxygen that exists at sea level. The team set off for the world's most famous mountain recently. Expedition leader Dr. Mike Grocott said, "One of the problems is that we meet patients when they are already ill, so we don't know much about them before they got to that state; we don't have anything for comparison. In this experiment we can do genetic and blood tests and know that the changes we see are due to a shortage of oxygen."

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