Non-high altitude methods for rapid screening of susceptibility to acute mountain sickness.
BACKGROUND
Acute mountain sickness (AMS) refers to the cerebral abnormalities typically triggered by exposure to hypobaric hypoxia at high altitude. Although AMS is not often life threatening, it can seriously impact health quality and decrease productivity. Thus, detection of potential susceptibility to AMS has become important for people arriving at high-altitude plateaus for the first time, including laborers and military staff. The aim of this review was to examine techniques which efficiently assess the susceptibility to AMS prior to exposure to high altitude.


METHODS
By searching online databases, we retrieved studies with associations between AMS and methods to detect the susceptible people who were not exposed to high altitudes. Studies reporting significant correlation coefficients between screening methods and AMS scores were included.


RESULTS
Several screening techniques of AMS susceptibility were found including cold pressor test, heart rate variability, and lung functions. Of these markers, heart rate variability was positively associated with AMS scores, while the rest were negatively associated with AMS scores.


CONCLUSIONS
We identified three physiological markers that were significantly associated with the risk of AMS. Although it is well known that simple sea level tests are not really helpful in predicting AMS currently, these markers, to some degree, may be employed as references in predicting susceptibility.
Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, School of Preventive Medicine, Fourth Military Medical University, No,169, Changlexi Road, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China. luowenj@fmmu.edu.cn.
Han
H
Song
Tao
T
Ke
Wen-Jing
WJ
Luo
Jing-Yuan
JY
Chen
D000208:Acute Disease; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000531:Altitude; D000532:Altitude Sickness / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis*; D004198:Disease Susceptibility; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009051:Mountaineering; D010092:Oximetry / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors