Individual tolerance to hypoxia: indicators, application and methods of determination

Relevance . Human resistance to hypoxia is the most important characteristic of the organism that determines its performance, risk of development and severity of cardiovascular, pulmonological and neurodegenerative diseases. Hypoxia, being a typical pathological process, is one of the key links in the pathogenesis of many acute and chronic conditions, leading to delayed consequences and significantly reducing the quality of life of patients. Hypoxic tolerance is determined by many factors, including genetic features, physiological mechanisms and external conditions. Various methods such as hypoxia tests, functional tests, etc. are used to determine individual tolerance to hypoxia. These methods make it possible to assess the degree of the organism’s tolerance to hypoxia and to determine optimal training and treatment regimes. The study of correlations between individual sensitivity indices and hypoxic resistance is widely covered in the literature, but in most cases, authors pay attention to one or several aspects of these interactions, without conducting a comprehensive analysis of various indicators. The purpose of the study is to actualize and structure the available information on the indicators of individual sensitivity to hypoxia, methods of objective assessment of human hypoxia resistance, as well as the applied significance of this characteristic of the human organism for clinical medicine and related sciences. Research Methods. The team of authors conducted a content analysis of domestic and foreign scientific publications in Russian and international databases. Results and Discussion . A consistent structural analysis of the available current data on indicators of hypoxic resistance and their relationship with hypoxic resistance is presented. Variations in the methods of hypoxic resistance determination currently used in clinical practice are considered. Conclusion. The literature review on the topic of individual hypoxia tolerance shows that the study of this phenomenon is an actual and multifaceted direction of modern science. Complex evaluation of individual hypoxia tolerance indicators will allow to predict the patient’s organism reaction to hypoxia accurately enough before the instrumental examination, and also will allow to rethink modern instrumental methods of evaluation and increase of organism resistance to hypoxia, widely used in clinical and sports medicine.