Oxygen pipeline supply failure: a coping strategy.

Oxygen is the most vital drug administered during anesthesia. The delivery of hypoxic or even anoxic gas mixtures during anesthesia has been reported. Because such occurrences often meet with disaster, modern anesthesia machines have a system of alarms to warn against the delivery of hypoxic or anoxic gas mixtures and also to warn of the failure of the oxygen pipeline supply. We describe the occurrence of a sudden failure of the oxygen pipeline supply, and discuss a strategy for coping with this emergency.