You may have heard of using hyperbaric chambers to take care of the “bends” that can happen if a scuba diver comes back again to the surface too quickly. While that was the first use of hyperbaric oxygen (HBOT), a growing number of conditions are treated successfully with this unique therapy. HBOT is low-risk, non-invasive, and has hardly any side effects.
What is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy?
Hyperbaric oxygen uses pure oxygen in a pressurized environment to take care of serious infections, wounds that won’t heal, decompression sickness, and other health issues. Red blood cells carry the oxygen the body need to have to function. However, the total amount they can carry is bound. If you have an injury or serious infection, your body requires extra oxygen to survive and heal.
HBOT helps your blood carry extra oxygen to speed your recovery. Extra oxygen can help with healing, fighting infection, and stimulating the discharge of stem cells from your bone marrow. Stem cells can target injured or infected tissue and begin the repair process.
What to Expect with hyperbaric oxygen treatment vancouver wa
HBOT can be given in a one-person chamber or a pressurized room which allows multiple patients to get therapy. The one-person chamber is transparent, and you lay down on the bed. In a pressurized room, patients sit in comfortable chairs or beds with a transparent oxygen hood over their heads. The environment pressure is slowly increased 2-3 times above normal air pressure. This lets your lungs ingest considerably more oxygen, and your blood absorbs more oxygen than normal breathing.
Most patients feel very little sensation while acquiring HBOT. During the pressurization phase, you will experience a “fullness” buildup in your ears caused by the change in air pressure. Before you begin therapy, you may be taught a variety of techniques to reduce that fullness.
You must be approved HBOT by a doctor. The amount of treatments will be different depending on your specific health needs. For maximum effectiveness, hyperbaric treatments have to be done regularly, usually five days a week, for you to two hours.
A trained hyperbaric technician will monitor you and speak to you periodically in your treatment. The tech will review the treatment process with you and take your signs before and after treatment. Additionally, a hyperbaric doctor is open to monitor your progress and answer questions. Patient education is provided throughout your visit, and everything concerns are addressed before treatment.
At the Hyperbaric Physicians of Georgia (HPG) facilities, the HBOT chambers include televisions. You can view a movie, TV programming, or maybe rest or nap.
Equipment employed by HPG is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. HPG staff are continually been trained in current HBOT procedures and safety precautions. Your safety, as well as the safety of HPG staff, is of paramount importance.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Benefits
HBOT provides body-wide benefits by delivering healing oxygen. HBOT has been used successfully with patients to:
Treat non-healing wounds: Many factors will keep a wound from healing quickly: tissues aren’t getting enough oxygen (hypoxia), tissues aren’t being repaired fast enough, reduced immune response, and inflammation prolongs tissue swelling. Rather than relying on veins to supply the oxygen, HBOT pushes oxygen into the tissues from the exterior. If you see no progress in wound healing after fourteen days, ask your personal doctor if HBOT would help.
Helps with the poor immune response against infections: White blood cells need huge amounts of oxygen, as provided by HBOT, to kill bacteria. HBOT is especially helpful with deep bone infections (osteomyelitis), flesh-eating infections, brain abscesses, and chronic infections.
Treat injuries: Hyperbaric oxygen wound healing is often used especially where arteries have been damaged and can’t transport the oxygen and nutrients necessary to repair tissues. HBOT can help build new arteries, which build new tissues that increase healing.
Reduce inflammation: Treatment is effective with inflammation related to transplanted tissue, skin grafts, and reconstructive surgery; wounds caused by diabetes complications, crush injuries, amputations, and the chronic inflammation of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Treat anemia: Anemia is a blood disorder that triggers a losing blood, which makes it harder for the body to get oxygen to cells.
Helps with irritable bowel syndrome (ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease): Additionally, it may help heal painful mouth sores, digestive tract ulcers, and fistulas (an abnormal passage from your skin into your body). These wounds raise the risk of infections and cannot be treated with external wound care. HBOT gets oxygen deep into tissues and wounds that extend to the bone. They are often resistant to antibiotics.
Reduce pain from IBD, wounds, surgery, and non-healing stomach ulcers.
Treat traumatic brain injury: (caused by concussions, contusions, skull penetration, or tearing caused by twisting of the mind), brain injury caused by carbon monoxide or cyanide poisoning, and decompression sickness. Deficiency of oxygen is usually linked to many brain injuries.
Treat acquired brain injuries, such as strokes, tumors, degenerative diseases, and toxins, that happen to be also related to insufficient oxygen. HBOT helps heal brain injuries by increasing oxygen, suppressing inflammation, decreasing cell death, and reducing pressure inside the skull from swelling, blocked circulation, or damaged tissue. HBOT can bypass vessel blockage or destruction by delivering oxygen right to brain tissue.
Treat the damage done by cancer treatment, such as radiation. Radiation can cause brain injury, sores that lead to bone death, radiation burns, and radiation-induced wounds. Radiation to the top and neck can cause painful injury to salivary glands, mouth tissue, teeth, and jaws. Chest radiation causes skin to break down, leading to infection and pain. Radiation to the mid-section can cause bladder pain and incontinence. HBOT helps stimulate cell growth in the liner of the bowels by building new arteries and. New vessels build new tissue to assist wound healing.
Hyperbaric oxygen benefits skin by correcting age spots, mending sagging skin, and providing a standard youthful appearance.
HBOT is very safe, and there are few negative side effects. The most frequent is damage to the eardrums and sinuses caused by pressure changes.
Any air-filled body cavity can feel the consequences of pressure change: sinuses, bowels, bladder, lungs, and teeth. Our anatomies adapt to pressure changes effectively. However, if something is blocking your pressure-equalizing systems, like a sinus infection or congestion, this side effect is almost certainly going to occur. It could cause pain in your cheeks, eyes or forehead, and a nosebleed. Before you undergo HBOT, you are shown how to lessen this pressure in your ears.
Some patients have minor vision changes after 20 treatments, including myopia or blurry vision, eyelid twitching, and faster cataract development. These self-correct after treatment ends.
Claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces) is a common side-effect. However, individual HBOT chambers are transparent, this means you can see all around you. An HBOT treatment room is no more enclosed than any room. Your HBOT doctor will thoroughly determine when you can tolerate the therapy. Also, if you’re in the chamber and cannot stand it, your technician will be ready to take you out. You will have the right to promptly end a session.
Hypoglycemia (dropping blood sugar levels) can be common for folks with diabetes. Blood sugar levels have a tendency to decrease with HBOT. This can be corrected by starting your with a higher-than-normal blood sugar levels level.
Feeling tired after an HBOT session is common. However, some individuals feel energized after cure.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Cost
Many people are curious about hyperbaric oxygen prices. Hyperbaric Physicians of Georgia’s facilities have contractual arrangements with most commercial medical health insurance carriers, along with Medicare and Medicaid. Before your appointment, our staff will contact your insurance provider and verify your coverage for HBOT. Staff will provide you with an estimate of any out-of-pocket costs associated with your deductible and/or copays.