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Wed Jul 4 05:03:26 BST 2007

About a year and a half ago I spent a whole afternoon planted in front of my
computer monitor querying Pub Med for published data regarding this very
same issue.  I found none that either supports or refutes the 'no fly after
pneumothorax' contention.  The physics of it all, based on Boyle's Law of
gases (PV=k), certainly makes sense:  at a constant temperature, the volume
of a gas varies inversely with the pressure on the gas.  So, in theory, a
small fixed volume of unresolved pneumothorax in the interpleural space will
expand to a larger volume as the ambient pressure goes down (as it will in
the cabin of commercial aircraft) and potentially cause mischief, unless one
is departing from a high altitude location (higher than around 4,000 feet),
in which case the aircraft pressure is actually greater than ambient
pressure at departure.

Similar phenomenon:  anyone who has done high altitude mountaineering will
surely remember that wonderful (!!) sensation of intestinal 'degassing' that
one experiences as colonic gases increase in volume and intensity during
that first night up at base camp.  Select your tent mates carefully...

CM Ursic, MD
Santa Fe, USA (elevation 7,100 feet, lots of beans and spicy chiles,
tourists beware...)

-- 
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

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Advice on air evacuation after pneumothorax?