HWN Suggests

Oxygen Therapy Is Valuable, Sometimes

The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, the professional organization in this field, recognizes 13 conditions for which it is legitimate to place patients in high-pressure chambers that force pure oxygen into their blood and tissues...

The list includes decompression sickness (“the bends”), necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating disease), carbon monoxide poisoning, gas gangrene, the bone infection osteomyelitis, nonhealing wounds and delayed radiation injury to bone and soft tissue. But nowhere in the list are cerebral palsy, autism, multiple sclerosis, stroke, macular degeneration, spinal cord injury, sports injuries, heart attack, post polio syndrome, Lyme disease, migraine,…

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Featured

 Decompression in a Hyperbaric Chamber Explained

What a hyperbaric chamber does is to re-pressurize the entire body in a chamber, decreasing the size of the bubbles (“bubble-crunching”) while delivering high concentrations of oxygen at the same time. Then, the patient is slowly decompressed (off-gassing) under exacting control.

 Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine

The history of hyperbaric medicine is long and storied. The first use of pressurized gas to treat medical disorders was recorded in 1662 by Henshaw. Decompression sickness, also known as caisson disease or “the bends,” was first described during the building of the Eads Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge in the 1860s. In the 1930s and 1940s, Behnke pioneered the first dive tables allowing for longer dives with increased safety for the diver. This foundation would be the beginning of what we now understand as hyperbaric medicine.

Articles of Interest

A General Overview on the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Applications, Mechanisms and Translational Opportunities

The first documented use of hyperbaric medical therapy was in 1662 by Henshaw, a British physician who placed patients in a container with pressurized air. Interestingly, it was conducted before the formulation of the Boyle-Mariotte Law, which described the relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas, and prior to the discovery of O2 by John Priestly over 100 years later.

Are hyperbaric chambers really a fountain of youth?

The treatment they perform isn’t the HBOT that’s proven to be effective for wound healing and decompression sickness. HBOT typically involves a hard-shelled chamber, pure oxygen, and between 1.5 and three times the air-pressure of our atmosphere. Most hyperbaric spas have what amounts to a bag which they pressurize very slightly—1.2 or 1.3 times the air-pressure of our atmosphere,...

Diving into Academic Hyperbaric Medicine

If you look through an emergency medicine textbook the hyperbaric medicine chapter will be towards the back and will be rather brief. It’s not an area of focus of a core emergency medicine curriculum although it’s part of it.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: What to Know

High-pressure oxygen treatment, once reserved for deep sea divers suffering from “the bends,” is increasingly being tested to remedy other conditions.

Multiple sclerosis survivors swear by hyperbaric oxygen – but does it work?

Until we understand more at the molecular level about how oxygen under pressure can make sustained changes to various biological processes in the brain, people with MS will continue to use the treatment and the majority of the medical community will remain unconvinced of its merits.

Under Pressure

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a resurgent darling in the world of cure-alls...'Through the years, Cochrane has meta-analyzed countless HBOT studies. They’ve looked at HBOT for stroke, multiple sclerosis, severe ear infections affecting bone, and burns—and found that the therapy is without efficacy for all of those ailments. For persons with traumatic brain injury, HBOT might increase survival rates a bit, but it doesn’t help neurologic function. HBOT might help migraine and cluster headaches a little, and maybe, if you start treatment rapidly, hearing loss and heart attacks. The best evidence of efficacy is the use of HBOT in chronic wounds, especially related to diabetes. It’s also pretty useful for treating cases of the bends.

Resources

Hyperbaric Aware

Hyperbaric Awareness USA™, an initiative of CūtisCare, aims to promote the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which in turn help prolong lives, avoid amputations, reduce cost of care, and improve overall quality of life. Due largely in part from a lack of awareness, there’s a largely underserved population who could benefit from hyperbaric medicine and it is our mission to make this life changing treatment more accessible in our communities.

Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine.Journal

Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine is published quarterly by the South Pacific Medicine Underwater Society and the European Underwater and Baromedical Society.

Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society

The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS) is an international non-profit organization serving members from more than 35 countries. The UHMS is the primary source of scientific information for diving and hyperbaric medicine physiology worldwide.

Canadian Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Association

Promoting excellence in Hyperbaric and diving medicine through leadership in education, promotion of best practices and advocacy for our patients.