Study into oxygen therapy

More than 650,000 people aged over 45 are affected by debilitating heart failure in the UK.

Patients run the risk of developing low levels of oxygen in their blood, which can damage their heart function. Doctors remain unsure about the scale of the problem but up to half of patients die within a year.

One treatment involves giving them home oxygen therapy but it is expensive and is a burden for patients and their carers, while little work has been done to assess its benefits or cost-effectiveness.

Now in a 870,000 trial, experts from Hull will examine the impact of the therapy in 150 patients.