Oxygen therapy and home oxygen in children — branching viva

Opening — framing the problem

The examiner begins: a two-year-old with pneumonia has a saturation of eighty-eight per cent in air and looks only mildly unwell. How do you think about oxygen here? ^{[10] [6]}

I would treat oxygen as a drug given to correct hypoxaemia and titrated to a saturation target band, not to the highest number. This child is genuinely hypoxaemic despite looking settled, which is the common trap of silent hypoxaemia, so I would start supplemental oxygen by nasal cannula, aim for a target band of around ninety-two to ninety-six per cent, and treat the underlying pneumonia. ^{[3] [10]}