Altitude-related illness: advice to travellers.

Abstract Altitude-related medical problems have received much attention in the recent medical literature. Family physicians must be knowledgeable about these problems so that they can give appropriate advice to travellers. The author, a practising family physician, discusses issues arising from both the modest cabin altitudes experienced in modern-day air travel and the greater altitudes experienced by skiers and trekkers, pilots and mountaineers, and lowland adventurers of all sorts. He reviews the process of acclimatization to altitude and the four principal forms of altitude illness.