The UK's Leading Independent Medical Oxygen Supplier
The UK's Top Customer Rated Supplier of Medical Oxygen
SOS Oxygen is the industry award winning medical oxygen supplier, delivering medical gases throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
SOS Oxygen supplies the UK with low cost medical oxygen cylinders providing a lifeline to patients.
Our customers include:
- Aesthetic / Plastic Surgeons
- Ambulance Services
- Dental Practices
- Fire Services
- First Aid Responders
- GP Surgeries
- NHS Trusts
- Paramedics
- Physiotherapists
- Police Forces
- Search & Rescue Teams
Medical Gas Supply
We have bespoke supply options for specific customer requirements.
Our cylinder pages show our range of medical oxygen cylinders and other medical gas cylinders.
Our Standard Service is designed for lower use customers such as GP surgeries and includes:
- Free next day delivery
- 3x cylinder exchanges ("refills"), per cylinder, per year, at no extra cost
- Annual cylinder report
- Personal account manager
Our High-Use Service is designed for customers such as ambulance services and hospitals and includes:
- Discounted cylinder rental
- Discounted cylinder exchanges ("refills")
- Low cost next day delivery
- Annual cylinder report
- Personal account manager
(High-Use Service minimum rental spend of £100 + VAT per month)
Our Dental Service is designed specifically to support dentists with low usage requirements and includes:
- CQC compliant medical oxygen cylinder (579 litres of gas)
- Free next day delivery
- Free cylinder exchanges ("refills") for expiry dates (we’ll contact you before your cylinder expires and arrange delivery of a fresh cylinder free of charge)
- Annual cylinder report
- Personal account manager
Our Veterinary Service is designed specifically to support vets with high usage requirements and includes:
- Discounted cylinder rental
- Discounted cylinder exchanges ("refills")
- Next day delivery
- Annual cylinder report
- Personal account manager
Check Out Our Online Shop
A range of medical supplies & equipment providing a lifeline to patients in emergency situations.
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- AED defibrillators
- Airways
- BVM resuscitators
- CPR pocket masks
- Cylinder trollies
- Dental kits (airway & breathing)
- Hand held portable suction units
- Laryngeal mask airways
- Mouthpieces & filters
- Nasal Cannula
- Oxygen concentrators
- Oxygen cylinder bags
- Oxygen door stickers
- Oxygen masks
- Oxygen starter kits
- Oxygen tubing
- Penthrox
- Pulse oximeters
- Supraglottic airways
Our Service
SOS Oxygen is the UK's fastest growing supplier of medical oxygen cylinders.
Established in 1971, SOS Oxygen has over 50 years of experience in supporting healthcare professionals providing a lifeline to patients.
SOS Oxygen is a member of the trade body BCGA (British Compressed Gases Association).
Senior members of the SOS Management Team sit on the BCGA TSC7 Committee along with the other main medical gas suppliers in the industry, BOC, Air Liquide, and Air Products.
The primary objective of the BCGA TSC7 Committee is the safety of patients.
Patient safety is achieved by ensuring that all medicinal products provided by BCGA member companies are safe to use and fit for their intended purpose.
TSC7 promotes safety through liaison with the MHRA and other government departments, publishes best practice guidance, and participates in relevant standards work.
Medical Oxygen Cylinders
The Responder O2 range of medical oxygen cylinders from SOS Oxygen incorporates the latest design and technology, featuring a '1 switch' operation to turn the cylinder on and select oxygen flow rates in a single movement.
The new '1 switch' design makes our Responder O2 cylinders the fastest, most reliable and easy to use medical oxygen cylinders on the market.
Nitronox Cylinders
In addition to medical oxygen cylinders, SOS Oxygen also specialises in the supply of Nitronox cylinders, an effective pain relief system containing an analgesic gas mixture composed of 50% medical nitrous oxide / 50% medical oxygen.
This analgesic gas mix is commonly referred to as Entonox, however Entonox is BOC’s registered trademark for its product. Our Nitronox and BOC’s Entonox are the same gas products/mixes but manufactured and supplied by separate companies under different trademarks and product licenses.
Cylinder Reports
You'll receive an annual cylinder report to download for your records, including barcode details of the types and quantities of medical oxygen and Nitronox cylinders on your account, plus batch numbers and expiry dates. The annual cylinder reports detail all the information you'll require for CQC inspections.
Expiry Dates
There's no need to call us when your cylinders' gas expiry dates are due to expire, our digital asset tracking system continuously monitors all of our cylinders and we'll be in touch to arrange replacement cylinders ("refills"), free of charge, before your medical gases expire.
Deliveries
Callouts for exchange cylinders ("refills") and deliveries are carried out by your personal account manager who will liaise directly with you to arrange visits to your site.
Medical Oxygen Training
SOS Oxygen works in partnership with ProTrainings to provide accredited training courses in the administration of medical oxygen, Nitronox/Entonox, first aid, and other healthcare topics.
In addition to medical oxygen training, ProTrainings also provides an extensive library of training courses including:
- First Person on Scene / First Responder
- AED Defibrilator / CPR Resuscitation / BLS / ILS / ALS
- First Aid
- First Aid in the Workplace
- General Health & Safety
What is Medical Oxygen and What is it Used For?
Oxygen is critical to life, in fact, almost all living things, including humans, need oxygen to survive.
How much oxygen is in the air we breathe?
Oxygen typically makes up 21% of Earth's atmosphere.
Oxygen also makes up around half of Earth's crust in the form of oxides.
Why is medical oxygen so important?
The importance of medical oxygen in the field of healthcare medicine is vital.
Medical oxygen is used every day in healthcare settings for resuscitation and inhalation therapy.
Medical oxygen administration is believed to be the most common treatment given in hospitals in the developed world.
Medical oxygen is on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines and modern medicine could not be practiced without the support of medical oxygen.
What is medical oxygen used for?
- To carry out cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
- To provide life support for artificially ventilated patients
- To carry out anaesthetic techniques
- To aid cardiovascular stability
- To restore tissue oxygen tension by improving oxygen availability in a wide range of conditions such as; COPD, cyanosis, shock, severe haemorrhage, carbon monoxide poisoning, major trauma, cardiac/respiratory arrest
What are the contraindications / side effects of medical oxygen therapy?
There are no absolute contraindications to the use of medical oxygen but the inspired concentration should be limited in certain cases including premature infants and those patients with chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
British Thoracic Society (BTS) guidelines on the safe therapeutic use of medical oxygen encourages proper assessment of the patient before use.
The target oxygen saturation recommended depends on the condition being treated as the administration of an inappropriate concentration of oxygen can have serious or even fatal consequences.
Where can I find out more about using medical oxygen?
The British Thoracic Society (BTS) is an extensive source of information, standards, and guidelines related to the use and administration of medicinal oxygen including the use of oxygen masks, nasal cannula, and oxygen flow rate settings.
The British Thoracic Society Emergency Oxygen Guideline Development Group has published a comprehensive document 'BTS Guideline for Oxygen Use in Adults in Healthcare and Emergency Settings'.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is also a good source of information related to the use and administration of medicinal oxygen.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has treatment summary information relating to medicinal oxygen listed under the British National Formulary (BNF).
The British National Formulary (BNF) lists key information on the selection, prescribing, dispensing and administration of medicines.
What Makes Oxygen Medical Grade?
In the UK, medical oxygen manufacturers and distributors are licensed and regulated by the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency).
The MHRA is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom. It is the regulator responsible for ensuring the efficacy and safety of medicines and medical devices.
The MHRA operates in a statutory framework set by HM Government, working within government and the wider health system to direct overall policy in its regulatory field.
The MHRA prioritises patient safety across the lifecycle of the products it regulates to ensure that medicines and healthcare products available in the UK are safe and effective.
What Are The Regulations for Medical Oxygen Cylinders?
The manufacture maintenance of medical oxygen cylinders and valves plays an important roll in safety and efficacy.
In order to maintain safety and efficacy, only cylinders and valves which have been manufactured specifically for use with medicinal oxygen must be used.
Medical oxygen cylinders contain high pressure gas and large amounts of stored energy.
It is crucial that medical oxygen cylinders and valves are manufactured, serviced, and maintained in line with recognised standards and specifications.
It is mandatory that medical oxygen cylinders are manufactured to appropriate standards, and are then periodically inspected and tested to ensure the safety of people who come into contact with them.
Each medical oxygen cylinder is given an initial inspection and test at the time of manufacture, then inspections are carried out each time the cylinder is filled.
An inspection is a formal examination of the cylinder and its valve, and is carried out at various times during the life of a cylinder.
The initial inspection and test is carried out by the manufacturer in accordance with the applicable design standards with supervision from an inspection body.
Each medical oxygen cylinder is given a periodic inspection and test which is carried out at set frequencies or when routine inspection determines a need.
The periodic inspection and test provides assurance that each cylinder is fit for purpose and remains safe for continued use.
Periodic inspections and tests are specialist activities and can only be carried out by licensed inspection & test centres using specialist equipment and methods.
Cylinder inspection & test centres are regulated by the Competent Authority. In the UK the Competent Authority is the Secretary of State for Transport, within the Department for Transport.
Pre-fill inspections are carried out at specially equipped filling centres, with qualified staff using appropriate procedures in line with the filling station's QMS (Quality management System). Pre-fill inspections are required to conform to the relevant standards laid out in GMP.
Medical oxygen cylinder valves are medical devices which withstand large amounts of stored energy, therefore it is crucial that they are manufactured, serviced, and maintained in line with recognised standards and specifications using replacement parts supplied by the original manufacturer.
The maintenance of medical gas cylinder valves is a specialist activity and can only be carried out by authorised service centres using specialist equipment and methods.
Medical grade oxygen is a licensed medicine which differs in purity and quality from other grades of oxygen.
Medicinal oxygen is a drug and is the only grade which is suitable for use on patients in a medical setting.
Medicinal oxygen is tested and certificated to meet authorised specifications for its identity, purity, and content.
Medicinal oxygen cannot be released to market until it has been analysed and certificated by a QP (Qualified Person) acting on behalf of the manufacturer.
The manufacturing process of medical oxygen is closely monitored, controlled, and documented to ensure the quality and purity of the medicine meets quality standards for pharmacopeia.
All cylinders which are filled with medical grade oxygen must display a batch label including expiry date, and product label which lists details of the medicine and the manufacturer, including licence details and contact details.
Medicinal oxygen must be produced in line with recognised GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices). GMP describes the minimum standard manufacturers of medicines must meet in their production processes.
Medicinal oxygen must also be stored and distributed in line with recognised GDP (Good Distribution Practices). GDP describes the minimum standard medicines wholesalers must meet in their storage and distribution processes before medicines reach patients.
The MHRA coordinates inspections to verify compliance with these standards and plays a key role in harmonising GMP and GDP activities.
Non-medical grade oxygen raises uncertainties relating to the purity and content of the gas, and the occurrences of particulate and microbial contamination which can result in unacceptable risks to patients.
How is Medical Oxygen Made?
Medicinal oxygen is a drug which is strictly monitored and analysed at each stage of the manufacturing process to ensure it conforms to the purity and quality required by pharmacopeia.
The manufacturing process for creating medicinal oxygen starts with an ASU (air separation unit).
The ASU takes in atmospheric air and cools it to temperatures at which the constituent gases separate and turn to liquids.
Atmospheric air is made up of around:
- 78% nitrogen
- 21% oxygen
- 0.9% argon
- Carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour, and neon are some of the other gases that make up the remaining 0.1 percent
These gases turn to liquids at the following temperatures:
- Nitrogen: -195.8 celsius
- Oxygen: -183 celsius
- Argon: -185.8 celcius
Once the gases have been liquified, they can be stored in cryogenic storage vessels at temperatures low enough to keep them in their liquid states until they are required for use.
The manufacturing process for turning liquid oxygen back to its gaseous state includes:
- Using a specialist cryogenic pump to pump the liquid oxygen out of the cryogenic storage vessel.
- Pumping the liquid oxygen through a vaporiser to warm it until it turns back in to a gas.
- Once the oxygen has turned back in to a gas, it can be pumped into medical oxygen cylinders.
Oxygen - A Brief History
What does the name oxygen mean?
The name oxygen comes from the Greek 'oxy genes', meaning acid forming.
Oxygen is found naturally as a molecule. When two elemental oxygen (O) atoms bind together they form dioxygen (O2).
What the medical community calls “oxygen” (O) is technically dioxygen (O2).
Oxygen’s official chemical symbol is O, and its atomic number is 8, which means that an oxygen atom has eight protons in its nucleus.
Oxygen is a gas at room temperature and has no colour, smell or taste.
When was oxygen first discovered?
Around 2,500 years ago, the ancient Greeks identified air. Along with earth, fire, and water, it was considered one of the four elemental components of creation.
Over 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci suggested that the air we breathe contains something vital to life, having found that combustion seemed to remove it from air, causing animals to suffocate. Many medieval alchemists tried to find it, without success.
Then, on 1st August 1774, a free-thinking English chemist and maverick theologian named Joseph Priestley succeeded in separating out the substance, a colourless gas, by heating mercuric oxide.
This demonstrated that "air is not an elementary substance, but a composition" of gases. It proved that the newly discovered substance was a single chemical element, rather than some special mix of gases.
When Joseph Priestley discovered this colourless gas, he answered the age-old question of why and how things burn.
Finding that a candle would burn and that a mouse would thrive in this gas, he called it “dephlogisticated air,” based upon the belief that ordinary air became saturated with phlogiston once it could no longer support combustion and life. Priestley was not yet sure, however, that he had discovered a “new species of air.”
The following October, Priestly accompanied his patron, Shelburne, on a journey through Belgium, Holland, Germany, and France, where in Paris he informed the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier how he obtained the new “air.” This meeting between the two scientists was highly significant for the future of chemistry.
Lavoisier immediately repeated Priestley’s experiments and, between 1775 and 1780, conducted intensive investigations from which he derived the elementary nature of oxygen, recognized it as the “active” principle in the atmosphere, interpreted its role in combustion and respiration, and gave it its name, meaning “acid maker”. Lavoisier’s pronouncements of the activity of oxygen revolutionized chemistry.
However, Priestley was the first to publish his findings and thus allow others to confirm his discovery and it is known that he had already shown Lavoisier how to make oxygen, undermining Lavoisier’s claim.
Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community.
Some historians argue that credit for discovering oxygen should go to the Swedish chemist Carl Scheele, who may have identified it several years before Priestley. Unfortunately, a letter he sent to Lavoisier describing his work never arrived, while his scientific report sat in a printer’s office for two years, ensuring his work was overshadowed by Priestley and Lavoisier.
An Englishman by birth, and a scholar and teacher throughout his life, Priestley (24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was deeply involved in politics and religion, as well as science. He published over 150 works and conducted experiments in several areas of science. He invented carbonated water, the rubber eraser, and wrote an important early paper about electricity. He also identified a dozen key chemical compounds.
He was widely notorious in philosophy and his unorthodox religious writings and his support for the American and French revolutions so enraged his countrymen that he was forced to flee England in 1794. He settled in Pennsylvania, where he continued his research until his death in 1804.
When was oxygen first used as a medicine?
Thomas Beddoes, considered the father of respiratory therapy, worked with the inventor James Watt to generate oxygen and other gases and opened a Pneumatic Institute in Bristol, England, in 1799.
The Pneumatic Institution administered oxygen free of charge to out-patients, for conditions including consumption, asthma, palsy, dropsy, obstinate venereal complaints, scrophula or King’s Evil and other diseases, which ordinary means have failed to remove.
Watt, Davy and their colleagues at the Pneumatic Institution made no claim for cure; they informed patients that their aim was the investigation of the efficacy of oxygen in treatment of disease.
Many of the techniques developed by the Pneumatic Institution are still used today, including corrugated non-crushable breathing tubes, mouthpieces and the method for mass production of gases devised by Watt. The Institution was converted into a normal hospital to cope with the outbreak of typhus in Bristol in the autumn of 1800. This brought to a halt the rational and scientific investigation of oxygen therapy until the work of Haldane and others nearly a century later.
The first cylinders for storing oxygen were developed in 1868, which allowed its use in general anesthesia.
The first recorded use of oxygen as a medicine was published by George Holtzapple (1862-1946) when he used oxygen to manage a young patient with pneumonia in 1885 and established its role in acute care.
On 6th March 1885, George Holtzapple had been practicing medicine less than a year when he received an urgent message that a 16-year old, Frederick Gable, was fighting for his life against pneumonia.
The young doctor attempted a daring, but primitive experiment to produce the life-saving element oxygen. The experiment was a success, young Gable was saved, and Dr. Holtzapple is credited with possibly the first recorded use of oxygen therapy in the treatment of illness.
Frederick Gable lived to the age of 91.
Although Holtzapple my not have been the first to use oxygen as a medicine, he was the first person to publish a case report with a reasoned physiological explanation of oxygen therapy. His publication was intended, in his own words, to benefit 'average country practitioners' who had no other means of learning about this valuable therapy.
Prior to the late 19th century, there had been no way to effectively store oxygen. However, with the invention of the oxygen cylinder, oxygen was able to be put to use in general anesthesia or for surgical procedures.
The 20th century saw a rapid succession of discoveries of oxygen's physiologic effects and technological advances that allowed its clinical application.
Contact Us
Please use our enquiry form to place an order or arrange a call-back to discuss your requirements, or alternatively, here's a handy list of contacts that will put you straight in touch with the people you're looking for.
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Accounts: accounts@sosoxygen.co.uk
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General Enquiries: office@sosoxygen.co.uk
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Sales: sales@sosoxygen.co.uk
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Tel: 01257 254525
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