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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."
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.
You use more air from your tank because of the depth/pressure. Your oxygen consumption speeds up because you use more air. Each breath takes more exertion; the air is denser and is more viscous, so it takes a lot more effort to breathe. Ever notice how, on those 30m+ dives your chest hurts afterwards? That's the intracostal muscles; you normally hardly use them, but the density of the air at 30m gives them a workout.
This is not, of course the only reason. Increased O2 use is also often due to apprehnsion over the depth, darness, etc. You also use more because a 30m dive is usually colder than a 10m dive. Cold dives are always more strenuous.
Hyperbaric treatments are based on increased O2 dissolved. Burn victims suffer from hemolysis, and can't trasnsport O2 in the normal way. Increased pressure helps this. Infection with gangrene & similar bugs is dependent on an anoxic environment.
Diving deep to cure a hangover? I have no comment......but I've (ahem) heard it works. I have no idea why though. Cold dives have the same effect.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
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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