When you bring in a dog struggling to breathe, the first question is: how much oxygen support do they need? Standard oxygen cages and masks can deliver about 40% oxygen at most. Patients in severe respiratory distress sometimes need much more — but invasive ventilation requires general anesthesia, intubation, and intensive monitoring with significant risk.

What is considered high flow oxygen? In veterinary medicine, high flow oxygen therapy delivers warmed, humidified oxygen at rates of 30–60 liters per minute through a nasal cannula — well above what a standard oxygen cage can provide. By delivering oxygen at high flow, we can achieve high oxygen concentrations and provide a small amount of positive pressure — without sedating or intubating the patient.

For pets with pneumonia, asthma exacerbations, congestive heart failure, or post-operative respiratory complications, high flow oxygen often turns a deteriorating patient around within hours — avoiding ventilation entirely. Common scenarios where it helps include a dog struggling to breathe at rest, or a cat open mouth breathing (a true emergency in cats, who almost never breathe through their mouth unless oxygen levels are critically low).