Editorial: Survival in Extreme Environments – Adaptation or Decompensation?, Volume II

Under normal environmental conditions human physiology describes the equilibrium of body homeostasis as a product of physiologic regulatory mechanisms, apparently resulting from a natural resistance to change from a pre-existing optimal biological condition. When humans experience extreme environments, like hyper/hypothermia, oxygen deprivation, or high-/low ambient pressures, the homeostatic equilibrium is challenged, and the victims may suffer from acute decompensation. Professional workers like divers, extraction industry workers, anglers and hunters, seamen, or people seeking these elements during leisure or recreational activity share this potential threat in case of accidents.

Therapeutic interventions after accidents in extreme environments was one key element in the invite for papers to this Research Topic. Another was the search for documentation for safe behavior to fight decompensation. Written guidelines for safe behavior and treatment of decompensated patient are seldom in place, and to write them we are in urgent need of knowledge. Due to obvious reasons, new knowledge of complex pathophysiologic mechanisms evoked by accidents under extreme conditions can often only be collected from experimental animal models.