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Alternative Hyperbaric Chamber Use
jtkooch writes "Most people associate the use of hyperbaric chambers with treatment of 'the Bends,' an affliction usually caused by the rapid depressurization of the body when SCUBA divers return to the surface too quickly. Masslive.com has an article showing that hyperbaric chambers along with oxygen can be used to treat other medical issues like the loss of a limb, gangrene, and tissue injuries suffered during radiation treatments for cancer."
Hyperbaric chambers were originally used to treat various random illnesses. I don't remember if they were O2 regulated, or just compressed air, but the concept has been around for a long time... ...everything old is new again.
If you're inside a hyperbaric chamber, it's difficult to watch the latest Michael Jackson special on Fox.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Many hospitals have had HBOT (Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy) units for years... they are particularly popular for treating non-healing wounds in diabetics.
I have heard of this procedure being used in Russia from at least 10 years ago. And it wasn't relatively new then, I'm assuming. They used it for post-surgery healing and as well for the reasons mentioned in the posted article.
They also used ice-cooling procedures to almost freeze patients undergoing intense heart surgeries, and that was around the same time.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
Although this seems kinda new I've heard of this kind of treatment being used by pro footbal franchises for several years now.
It pays to quickly fix up that bruise or contusion on your star player...
rather than paying him $10,000/second to sit on his ass.
ahh pro sports!
My mother suffers from chronic Lyme and has tried most of the latest experimental treatments for Lyme - bar one - hyperbaric chamber. She does have a friend, a young woman who suffers severely from the effects of Lyme, who has undergone hyperbaric treatment. It seems to be the only treatment that works for her. It's usually combined with potent IV antibiotics. Google can help you find more on this.
Also, I was surprised by the folowing statement from the article:
While the chambers are useful, they aren't cheap. One of the chambers at Baystate cost $130,000. The only other medical facility in Massachusetts with a chamber is Massachusetts General Hospital. Norwalk (Conn.) Hospital also has one.
$130,000 is cheap for a medical device.
The deeper you dive, the quicker you use your air - I thought (note, not claiming I'm right, just asking really) that a part of this was because as the pressure increases your metabolism speeds up, your body effectively ticks over at a much faster rate (I know I'm always hungry after a deep dive, much more so than after a shallow dive).
Hence the (ahem, very dangerous...) practice of diving deep to clear a hangover - you shouldn't dive with a hangover for lots of reasons, but I know dive-masters who go deep with a hangover. 5 or 10 minutes at 30 metres and they're just taken the equivalent of an hour or two's recovery (or they're in such deep shit that the hangover is no longer a major concern).
If true, this would explain quicker healing at pressure - whereas the explanation about "dissolving more oxygen" sounds rather dubious to me...
Anyone with a proper understanding in a position to confirm/refute/discuss ??
--
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
To raise your power level multiple times. Oh wait, it's not a Hyperbolic Time Chamber we're talking about here? Sorry...
But if you lose a limb, ain't no chamber gonna bring it back...
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Oddly enough, I've got one just down the street from me. I thought it odd that there would be a private hyperbaric clinic -- Vancouver (Canada) has lots of divers, but how many come up with the bends?
To be honest, I can't claim to know which hospitals around town have them, but to have (at least) one in a little clinic just down the street is pretty cool.
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So if the air is denser, then it should have more thermal mass, and should provide better cooling.
Anybody tried OC'ing in one of those chambers?
I hear that you can use the Hyperbolic Time Chamber whenever somebody is about to destroy the earth and you need to get all trained up to fight them!
Oh, wait...
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
In 1971-73, I worked at Saint Barnabas which had the world's largest hyperbaric facility, made by Linde. They had two 12 foot in diameter, 45 foot long chambers side by side. Each cylinder had three sub-chambers. The front of each could go to 100 PSI relative (about 225 feet of salt water equivalent). The other two chambers in each could do IIRC 60 PSI relative, but were usually only cranked to 60 feet or about 33.7 PSI relative.
Then patients had an Oxygen mask put on, and by Henry's Law the amount of gas dissolving in the bloodstream is proportional to the amount of gas in the air in the lungs. So they had 100% oxygen at 3x surface pressure, or about 15x the usual amount of oxygen in the lungs. This meant that hemoglobin was temporarily unnecessary, as the dissolved oxygen in the blood was more significant than the amount carried by hemoglobin.
This led to some amazing things. Carbon Monoxide poisoning was cured nearly instantly. Stroke victims, paralyzed on one side of their body, were wheeled in to the chamber and walked out 90 minutes later. Once an entire kidney transplant under hyperbaric conditions was done (donor and recipient each in one cylinder), the amount of surgical shock incurred was vastly reduced.
Burn victims were helped immensely, as the hypoxia/edema cycle was eliminated. Gas Gangrene, an anaerobic infection (claustridium welchi I think), was rapidly treated using this with no drugs.
But the hospital eventually tore it out - it was unused by the doctors. There were over 600 doctors on staff, but only a couple ever used it. We guessed part of the problem was it wasn't advertised in JAMA, nor was it covered in med school as a topic. Whatever the reason, it is sadly not there any more.
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I did some network and server work for one the the largest chamber makers in the US. They sent them all over the world and let me tell you it is very interesting just to see how they work and how they are put together.
These things are not cheap either. The last one I saw being made they where telling me it had already been sold for over 800,000 bucks and took about 4 months to make from the ground up.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
While I realize this site ain't exactly a medical journal, this is really old news. It fails to gain acceptance in the wider medical community because physicians cling to their orthodoxy the same way a priest might. Sad really, but we're only human after all.
Problem is, a lot of the chambers have been dismantled. They are large, expensive, and not that common. Most hospitals don't have them. They don't regrow limbs as heldlikesound (132717)seems to think, they promote faster healing with less pain. They DO reverse some of the effects of gangrene and diabetic necrosis. They are also usefull in preventing bone necrosis in cancer radiation therapy patients. As for overclocking - Rememeber the Apollo fire? I'm dating myself. The computer would need to be sheilded. The temp is not cold, just cool.
Don't mind me, I have more fun this way!
you needed one
If you used something like this too frequently, wouldn't it increase the amount of free-oxygen radicals wandering around your bloodstream causing damage?
are some of the reasons that hyperbaric chambers are not widely used.
Another reason is that their usefulness is quite limited.
People who work in pressurised environments risk the bone in their hip joints dying, probably due to the formation of small bubbles blocking the blood vessels. It is bad enough news if you are building a bridge, but to work as a surgeon for a prolonged period of a creer there would have to be vry clear evidence of effectiveness. Which is lacking.
In particular, it doesn't matter what pressure of Oxygen you apply to the outside of a solid organ (someone mentioned kidneys) unless there is a blood flow through it the transfer of Oxygen to the cells is going to be negligibly affected.
And until the oran is removed, the ordinary blood flow is quite adequate.
You are referring to dysbaric osteonecrosis ... and it is a form of decompression sickness (Caisson's Disease). Problem is, it is caused my nitrogen, not strictly pressure. So those working under pressure, or being treated, who are breathing oxygen, are at no risk for this malady.
...
Furthermore, it takes *years* of significant exposure to cause this
(Significant == depth and long duration)
Fire is a risk, but not a HUGE one, because multi-seat chambers are filled with air, not oxygen; the person receiving treatment breathes O2; the tenders? depends on who operates the chamber
Long ago I hypothesized an experiment that MUST someday be performed. It came to me while I was taking a scuba diving course, and Henry's Law was explained. Henry's Law explains the bends, the amount of gas dissolved in a liquid is proportional to the pressure. So when you go to a deep depth, more nitrogen is dissolved in the blood.
But what if you don't want to increase dissolved nitrogen in the blood, say for example you want to increase the dissolution of vaporized THC?
I expended much effort trying to figure a way to take a huge toke during scuba class, then immediately dive to the deepest depth, only returning to scuba breathing on exhalation, at depth. Of course it was impossible, if not lifethreatening, what if you had a coughing fit? The only proper way to perform the experiment is in a hyperbaric chamber. But I have visions of the Apollo 1 fire, so you'd probably have to rig up a pipe outside the chamber and pump in the smoke through a tube.
To test my theory in the only way possible, my buddies and I used to try to exert pressure directly on our chests. One of my friends could actually tolerate my 200lbs standing on his chest for a few seconds after a hit. Our empiric observations were that increased pressure on the lungs definitely increases the buzz, but whether this was due to increased THC uptake, or due to increased cranial pressure, we had no way to tell.