The 2007 Xtreme Everest expedition

Organisers of a medical expedition that put a team on top of Everest last year is looking for volunteers to trek to the mountain’s base camp to help further research.

Trekkers will need to be healthy and have deep pockets: the minimum cost is £2,635. Caudwell Xtreme Everest is looking for 112 volunteers to conduct research into high-altitude medicine and how oxygen deprivation affects seriously ill patients.

Results from the 2007 expedition which, as well as studying the effects of the medics who climbed to the top of Everest, collected medical data from 200 trekkers, have thrown up the need for further research, hence the 2009 expedition.

Data from the trekkers indicated that the heart changes as a result of altitude. The team running the magnetic resonance imaging which examined the volunteers wants to do further research. The Caudwell Xtreme Everest team will run two trekking groups to Nepal, in April next year.

The guinea pigs will be tested first in Britain and continually monitored during the trip, which will last 23 days. The plan is for trekkers to sleep at Everest base camp for two nights after completing the journey from Lukla. grough reader Jacqui Figgins was among those who made the trip in 2007. You can read the story of Jacqui’s experiences in our features section.

Despite the tribulations of trekking and testing, and the fact her father, who was accompanying her, had to be airlifted to hospital after being hit be a rockfall, Jacqui was enthralled by the whole expedition. She said: “I feel really proud. It’s fantastic to be part of something that’s so big and so worthwhile.”

Much of the research is for use with intensive-care patients throughout the world, who often suffer from hypoxia, or low blood-oxygen levels, which occur at high altitude.

The project is the brainchild of Dr Mike Grocott of University College London. Details of the 2009 expedition and a downloadable factsheet are on the Caudwell Xtreme Everest website.