Abstract
Oxygen therapy has long become a cornerstone in the treatment of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and other hypoxemic and hypercapnic chronic respiratory diseases. Studies have clearly shown beneï¬ts in terms of survival, improvement in dyspnea, exercise tolerance, and other associated conditions like pulmonary hypertension that arise due to the disease. However, guidelines regarding prescription of oxygen and to make choice of the delivery devices are not explicit. Furthermore, there still prevails a large unawareness and confusion among physicians to properly prescribe and advise patients about the use of oxygen for home therapy customizedasperindividualneeds.Theavailabilityofseveralnewoxygendeliveryandconservationdevicesandtechniquesoverthepast few decades has provided a wide spectrum of options to be used in combinations or alone. This article retrospectively tries to review the studies, trials, and researches published so far in this ï¬eld to give a broad idea based on consistent scientiï¬c evidence to help physicians frame their set of guidelines for prescribing long-term oxygen therapy.