2019 international hypoxia symposia

Feb 19, 2019

Our mission is to present cutting edge research of the very highest quality to advance our understanding of the many effects of hypoxia in human health and disease.

History

Beginnings of the Hypoxia Symposia

Like many new ideas, it is difficult to date exactly the origins of the Hypoxia Symposia: they are the fruit of many persons' work and dreams. The fall of 1973 is as close as we can come for the genesis of the Hypoxia meetings. Himalayan mountaineering was flourishing by then and it had become obvious that many climbers - and casual tourists and even doctors - knew little about many of the hazards of altitude.

Believing that the early Everest climbers had valuable knowledge of altitude to share, in the fall of 1973 Dr Charles Houston, with help from the Alpine Club, invited a dozen of the great British mountaineers to a meeting in London to talk about their personal experiences on the highest mountains. Among them were Noel Odell, Bill Tilman and Raymond Greene. Dr Mike Ward set the stage by summarizing what was known about altitude illnesses. Though no written record survives, the discussion was so stimulating that the Alpine Club organized a larger meeting in March 1975 in Wales, the proceedings of which were published a year later (1). In July 1975, the eighth year of high altitude research on Mount Logan (2), Drs. John Sutton and Charles Houston gave several informal seminars about various aspects of altitude physiology and medicine to some of the team who served as subjects for the research. These people, many of them climbers and students, were enthusiastic, suggesting that other mountaineers and scientists might also be interested.

Accordingly, Houston and the Yosemite Institute organized a three day meeting in Yosemite National Park. At this nervously planned meeting many aspects of mountain medicine were discussed by experts in altitude, cold injury, trauma, medical evacuations and other topics of importance to climbers, trekkers and casual visitors to the mountains. This Mountain Medicine One was so successful that three more were held, one in Yosemite and two, sponsored by the Arctic Institute, in Banff, the immediate ancestors of the Hypoxia Symposia.