Altitude sickness treatment · Treatment in Altitude sickness
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Treatment in Altitude sickness
Treatment in Altitude sickness
As soon as the symptoms of AMS appear, your first priority is recovering. You must not ascend any further until the symptoms have disappeared. This may take up to 48 hours, if it takes longer, descend. You could also descend on the onset of symptoms, this will make them disappear much faster, probably within hours.
If you are getting sicker or showing signs of HACE or HAPE, you must descend to a lower altitude as quickly as possible. If it is nighttime, do not wait for morning if you have a choice at all. You should descend at least as far as you were the last night you had no AMS symptoms. You may need to seek hospital care.
People with HACE and HAPE are frequently confused or exhausted, and are likely to need help with the descent. Help them down!
There is some equipment available to treat people with HACE or HAPE at high altitudes, including hyperbaric bags in which the sufferer can lie in a higher pressure atmosphere. Likewise, because the main cause of these illnesses is a lack of oxygen, breathing oxygen from a tank will slow their onset and may provide some temporary relief of symptoms. Either treatment buys some time if it is too dangerous to descend, but they are not a substitute for descent.
Sufferers of DCS needed to be hospitalised and treated in a recompression chamber: descent to sea level is not sufficient to alleviate DCS symptoms. As with HACE and HAPE, breathing oxygen may provide some temporary relief of symptoms allowing for rescue. Scuba diving organisations can advise further.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Altitude sickness
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Altitude sickness - updated Apr 2024
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Altitude sickness Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.