Xenon Inhalation for Expeditions to High Altitude: A Position Statement from the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme, UIAA) Medical Commission
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hilty, Matthias P., Urs Hefti, Pierre Bouzat, Hannes Gatterer, Lenka Horakova, Linda E. Keyes, Justin Lawley, Benjamin D. Levine, George Rodway, Daniel Trevena, Eduardo Vinhaes, and Benoit Champigneulle. Xenon inhalation for expeditions to high altitude: A position statement from the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme, UIAA) Medical Commission. High Alt Med Biol. 26:385–387, 2025. Background and Methods: Recently, xenon inhalation has been advertised for use as a pre-acclimatization method for high-altitude climbs, but this use is controversial and not without risks. The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation ( Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme , UIAA) Medical Commission convened a panel, including external experts, to develop a position statement on xenon inhalation as a pre-acclimatization method. Results: In this statement, we summarize the current state of research and discuss possible directions of future investigations. A pre-acclimatization strategy using xenon inhalation includes risks of respiratory depression, hypoxemia, systemic hypertension, and neurological impairment. The potential benefits of xenon inhalation, such as erythropoiesis, an increase in hemoglobin mass, or increased oxygen availability to the tissues, are not supported by the existing, current evidence. Conclusion: The UIAA Medical Commission recommends against the use of xenon inhalation in preparation for or during expeditions to high altitude unless part of a controlled study with appropriately qualified medical support such as anesthesia personnel.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.010 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.005 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".