Hyperbaric Oxygen Tutorial |
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Think of hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a rehabilitation tool for the body. Just as you prescribe exercise, rest, medications, lifestyle changes, and physical therapy, we prescribe oxygen to augment the treatment protocol you’ve established for your patient. Working in tandem with your treatment methods and protocol, hyperbaric oxygen therapy uses oxygen as a drug to help and accelerate the body’s ability to heal.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy enhances:
- Infection-fighting antimicrobials
- Fibroblasts (collagen producer)
- Angiogenesis
- Osteoclasts and osteoblasts
- White blood cell bactericidal activity
- Stem cell mobilization in diabetes
References:
Mader JT, Brown GL, Guckian JC, et al. A mechanism for the amelioration by hyperbaric oxygen of experimental staphylococcal osteomyletis in rabbits. J Infect Dis 1980; 142: 915-922.
Thom et al. Stem Cell Mobilization by Hyperbaric Oxygen, AM J Phys Heart Circ Phys 290:H1378, 2006.
Hunt TK, Pai MP. The effect of varying ambient oxygen tensions on wound metabolism and collagen synthesis. Surg Gynecol Obstet 1972; 135:561-567.
- The New England Journal of Medicine reports hyperbaric oxygen therapy as having “a number of beneficial biochemical, cellular and physiologic effects.” Every effect has a cause. The effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy are caused by patients breathing 100 percent oxygen in a pressurized chamber, three times normal pressure. Consequently, the elevated air pressure leads to a 10- to 15-fold increase in their plasma and tissue oxygen levels.
- The pressurized oxygen saturates the hypoxic areas of the body. hyperbaric oxygen therapy increases diffusion of oxygen through ischemic tissues with inadequate microcirculation by providing sufficient oxygen tensions to meet the metabolic needs and heal tissues. The treatment also causes constriction of the blood vessels, decreasing intra-cranial pressure and edema in injured tissues while still increasing the total amount of oxygen to the injured area.
- Hyperbaric oxygen therapy promotes the growth of new capillaries (neovascularization), fibroblast proliferation and collagen and new tissue development. In addition, white blood cell bactericidal activity at the wound site is elevated. High blood oxygen levels works synergistically with antibiotics to inhibit the growth of a number of anaerobic and aerobic organisms at the wound site.