When an injury does not heal, it can cause increased risk of infection. Since the skin is the largest organ in our body, its critical that we take care of it and take proper measures to heal nonhealing wounds.
Dr. Caroline Halperin, medical director of the The Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine at Carle BroMenn Medical Center says
“We treat radiation wounds, but the diabetic ulcer is the most prevalent; 85% of our diabetic patients who have had an amputation was preceded by an ulcer. And the five-year mortality rate in a diabetic patient that has had an amputation is as high as 50%.”
Dr. Halperin sometimes sees patients who have had open wounds for over a year, and since our skin is a living tissue that requires oxygen to live hyperbaric oxygen therapy makes perfect sense.
Most patients that come to us are stuck in the inflammatory phase of wound healing,” said Halperin. “There are four phases. There’s the hemostasis, the inflammatory, proliferating, and remodeling. These are all normal phases of wound healing, but what happens is when you get stuck in the inflammatory phase, which is kind of the cleanup phase trying to remove cells, killing bacteria, our bodies recruit these cells to help with the injury. And when you do that, some patients cannot get through that inflammatory phase.”
HBOT is a natural anti-inflammatory, making it another reason why the Center for Wound Healing uses hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a go-to for patients to finally have a solid means to heal those stubborn wounds.
Patients sit in a closed chamber exposed to an atmosphere of 100% oxygen. Normal air is about 21% oxygen. The oxygen also is at 2 to 2.5 times the normal atmospheric pressure. Treatments take one to two hours, and a course of treatment is daily for about a week. “It increases the plasma level of oxygen, which results in angiogenesis, which is a production of new blood cells. It helps with tissue repair and death of cells, and helps with infection,” said Halperin, adding the center’s heal rate is 93% to 95%.
Read more at WGLT.ORG
