Is Your Pet Oxygen Chamber Safe?

Is your pet oxygen chamber safe?

When your pet requires supplemental oxygen, a pet oxygen chamber can be a lifesaver. However, not all oxygen chambers are created equal. It's critical to ensure your pet's oxygen chamber is safe, effective, and designed specifically with their health in mind.

Many affordable pet oxygen chambers found online lack essential safety and control features. While they might seem budget-friendly, these generic chambers can pose serious risks, including:

• Unregulated Oxygen Levels: 
  Without proper oxygen regulation, your pet could experience oxygen toxicity (too much oxygen) or insufficient therapy (too little oxygen).

• Poor Ventilation and Carbon Dioxide Buildup: 
  Poorly designed chambers can trap carbon dioxide, causing harmful CO₂ accumulation and respiratory distress.

• Low-Quality Materials: 
  Chambers made from inferior materials may be unsafe, uncomfortable, or prone to damage.

When choosing a pet oxygen chamber, ensure it includes the following critical safety features:

Pawprint Oxygen's PureVent Pet Oxygen Chamber is specifically designed with pet safety as the top priority. It features:

• Advanced Venturi System: 
  Precisely controls oxygen concentration, eliminating the risk of oxygen toxicity.

• Optimal Ventilation: 
  Prevents carbon dioxide buildup, ensuring your pet's comfort and safety.

• Pet-Friendly Design: 
  Made from durable, comfortable materials suitable for pets up to 30lbs.
  
  

Veterinarian-approved and trusted by pet owners, the PureVent Chamber delivers peace of mind knowing your pet is receiving safe, effective oxygen therapy.

Watch for these critical signs indicating your pet could benefit from oxygen therapy:

• Rapid or labored breathing

• Persistent coughing or wheezing

• Lethargy or excessive fatigue

• Pale or bluish gums (cyanosis)

• Difficulty breathing after mild activity or excitement

Testing The Carbon Dioxide Level Within Your Pet's Oxygen Chamber

One of the most important elements of your oxygen cage setup is the displacement of carbon dioxide. Your pet is exhaling carbon dioxide with each breath, and without proper airflow and ventilation, carbon dioxide can build up and become unsafe for your pet.

The oxygen chambers we tested did not have any safety measures for mitigating or displacing carbon dioxide, which can make them very dangerous for your pet. The oxygen port on these chambers only accepts standard oxygen tubing, rather than the Venturi System. That means that the overall air exchange is very slow.

In our tests, carbon dioxide levels in these chambers reached unsafe levels within 5 minutes of use. Don’t worry, we didn’t put pets at risk! We used a canine lung model that has been validated against real pets, and it can be used to simulate the air exchange in a pet’s lungs and in an oxygen chamber. The bottom line is that these chambers were not safe to use because of the dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide.

The PureVent Pet Oxygen Chamber utilizes the Venturi System to flush carbon dioxide out of the chamber. The Venturi pulls in room air and mixes it with the oxygen from your oxygen concentrator, dramatically increasing the overall air exchange inside the chamber.

Additionally, the PureVent Pet Oxygen Chamber has two strategically placed Hypalon vents to allow excess CO2, heat and humidity to escape. Don't worry, since you are constantly replenishing the oxygen, the vents only affect the oxygen level by less than 1%.

Choosing the Oxygen Source for Your Oxygen Chamber

This last point is very important. In a previous blog post, we discussed the differences between medical-grade oxygen concentrators and non-medical units that you might find on Amazon. In short, non-medical units cannot provide enough oxygen to supply an oxygen chamber. Some non-medical units are incorrectly marketed to achieve the appropriate flow rates, but in the fine print, it’s clear that the oxygen purity decreases drastically at higher flow rates, making it no better than room air.

The oxygen chambers we tested have product listings which often feature non-medical oxygen concentrators being used with their chambers. We cannot stress enough how dangerous these items are for a pet.

Our tests show that you need at least 5 liters per minute of >90% oxygen used with the Venturi System to achieve acceptable levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in an oxygen chamber that is equivalent in size to our standard sized PureVent Pet Oxygen Chamber.

You need at least 10 liters per minute of >90% oxygen used with the Venturi System to achieve acceptable levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in a chamber that is equivalent in size to our Large Buster ICU Oxygen Cage.

When in doubt, ask your veterinarian about oxygen chambers.

Your veterinarian is the best person to advise you on these topics. If they aren’t familiar with home oxygen therapy, it may help to ask them some of the questions posed in this article, such as:

In general, we are concerned with the efficacy of the products we tested and with the marketing and images that are used to promote these products. We support new and innovative oxygen chambers that have pets’ safety in mind, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with these non-medical grade items sold through retailers like Amazon.