As everyone knows, oxygen is crucial to the healing process. However, it would take a long time for severe and infected wounds.
Fast and efficient healing is required for wounds from accidents, surgeries, or underlying disorders. A convincing remedy for wounds is hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
You will be enclosed in a pressurized hyperbaric chamber and given just oxygen to breathe during this treatment. It is a very effective, non-invasive, and painless medical procedure that will significantly accelerate your body’s natural healing process. And its advantages extend beyond the healing of wounds!
Let’s examine this fantastic process in more detail. Here is all the information you need to know about hyperbaric oxygen therapy and how it may significantly enhance your quality of life in addition to helping wounds heal.
HBOT’s advantages
The air we breathe normally consists of a mixture of gases, with oxygen making up around 21% of the mixture. A patient receives 100% pure, medical-grade oxygen during HBOT. They unwind in a pressurized hyperbaric chamber that has been precisely built to accomplish this.
Elevated oxygen concentrations can help your body heal more quickly or heal a persistent wound. Additionally, it can aid in the renewal of tissue and cells that are in danger of dying as a result of a reduced blood supply. HBOT enhances the healing of wounds and other health advantages by:
- Raising the blood flow
- Reducing edema and inflammation
- Weakening bacteria that cause infections
- Boosting the body’s defences against free radicals, which are unstable chemicals that can accumulate in cells and do harm
- Encouraging the development of fresh blood vessels
Scuba divers may benefit from it
Hyperbaric oxygen surgery is beneficial not just for severe wounds and injuries but also for scuba divers and individuals with decompression disease or DCI. They are brought back to the diving pressure during a session. This will allow for a slow decompression, resulting in a smaller volume of bubbles inside the body.
Aids in the healing of wounds
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy may be suggested for any injuries, cuts, or even wounds that are not healing due to diabetes. One of the reasons it is so well-liked is because of how well it heals wounds.
Blood vessels in your body are harmed by wounds. It discharges liquids that seep into your tissues and result in edema. Your tissues are heavily oxygenated during hyperbaric oxygen therapy because of the HBOT chamber’s high pressure. Reduced edema, oxygen deprivation, and tissue death may follow from this.
It has the potential to boost immunity
Your body’s immune system can be strengthened by hyperbaric oxygen therapy. It raises the concentration of oxygen in your tissues and neutralizes the poisons produced by some bacteria. This will strengthen your body’s defences against infection and improve your white blood cells’ capacity to combat free radicals.
How it operates
Normally, red blood cells carry oxygen from the air we breathe to the body’s tissues and organs. The pressured environment created by HBOT enables oxygen to dissolve right into blood plasma, the liquid portion of blood that carries nutrients, hormones, and proteins. Over half of the blood volume in the body is made up of plasma.
Deep into the body’s tissues, such as the lymphatic system and the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, the plasma transports pure oxygen. The body’s oxygen content rises as a result, sometimes by up to 1,000 percent above normal. This extremely concentrated oxygen supply through the plasma can be therapeutic and enhance the body’s inherent healing capacity in individuals with specific medical disorders.
Conditions HBOT treats
The FDA has approved hyperbaric oxygen therapy for the treatment of several ailments and wounds, including chronic or hard-to-heal wounds. Following are a few ailments that HBOT may be used to treat:
- Toxicity from carbon monoxide
- Crush injuries
- Ulceration on the diabetic foot
- Unsuccessful skin flaps and transplants
- Gangrene
- Necrotizing soft tissue infections (which happen when a disease, injury, or reduced blood supply causes most or all of the cells in a certain area of the body to die)
- Osteomyelitis, or inflammation or infection of the bones
- Tissue damage caused by radiation
- Severe burns
- Traumatic ischemia, a disorder where a portion of the body’s blood supply is cut off
There are extremely few hazards and negative effects associated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Rarely, patients may get manageable side effects including low blood sugar, transient visual abnormalities, or pressure injuries to the lungs or ears.
What takes place in an HBOT therapy session
Your doctor will create a treatment plan based on your unique condition, the intensity of your symptoms, and your desired health outcomes once they have decided that HBOT is the right course of action for you. This will assist in determining the number of treatment sessions as well as the HBOT chamber’s pressure level. For many illnesses, 20–40 treatments spread over four–six weeks are needed, with 92-hour sessions averaging between them.
A technician will take your vital signs and go over a safety checklist at the start of each session to make sure you have taken off all jewellery, watches, and electronic gadgets and haven’t used any lotions or perfumes. A gown made entirely of cotton will be given to you for comfort and security. Cotton doesn’t retain static, which might be dangerous during treatment like synthetic fibres do.
A water bottle will also be provided for you. When the HBOT chamber pressurizes, it can help to clean your ears by sipping water, which is comparable to the ear-popping sensation that occurs on flights.
You just lie back in the dedicated room and start breathing properly after that. You can watch TV or a movie, listen to music, or go to sleep. Throughout the treatment session, your technician will be in constant visual and audio contact with you to address any queries or worries you may have. You can get back to your day when the technician checks your vitals one more time throughout your session. No recuperation period is required.
Do I need to use HBOT?
Not everyone is a good candidate for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and it takes a major commitment from the patient to make all scheduled sessions. If this therapy is prescribed for you, we strongly advise you to speak with your doctor in-depth about the advantages and possible drawbacks of this extremely specialized care.
