Lecture: Xtreme Everest

They will talk alongside mountaineer Peter Habeler, who (with Reinhold Messner) completed the first ascent without oxygen of Mount Everest in 1978.

Dr Grocott and Dr Montogomery are the leaders of the Xtreme Everest expedition, which plans to scale Everest in Spring 2007 in order to gain a greater understanding of how the human body works at high altitudes.

The fundraising lecture 'The Xtreme Everest Expedition: world's highest laboratory'  will detail the reasons behind the team's experiments and the hardships which will face them there. While climbing Everest, doctors will measure the amount of oxygen in their own blood both at the summit and en route as well as running tests on their brains, lungs and metabolism. The extreme conditions on the mountain - oxygen levels at the summit are only one third of those at sea level - provide the ideal laboratory to test the very limits of human endurance.

The team, all of whom work in anaesthesia, intensive care or remote medicine, will draw parallels between the human body pushed to its limits during critical illness with the changes that occur at extreme altitude. Low levels of oxygen in the blood of high altitude climbers are similar to the levels seen in blue babies, cystic fibrosis sufferers and in critically ill patients on breathing machines with severe heart and lung conditions.

Low oxygen levels in the cells are a universal problem in patients with critical illness. Patients are difficult to study because of the diversity of their illnesses, making it difficult to separate out problems relating to low oxygen levels. Healthy individuals progressively exposed to low oxygen levels as they ascend to altitude can be used as models for some aspects of critical illness and the Xtreme Everest team are pioneering this approach.

To find out more about the lecture, which will take place on 1 February 2007 at the Royal Geographical Society, use the link at the bottom of this article.

• Links: 
• Royal Geographic Society
• Xtreme Everest