Due to an aging population and an increasing number of people living with heart disease, diabetes and obesity, the need for specialized wound care is growing. According to University of Pittsburgh research, chronic, hard-to-heal wounds affect more than 10 million people in the United States.
To enhance its ability to meet the need for chronic wound care locally, Blessing Hospital has replaced the two hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy chambers in its Wound Healing & Hyperbaric Center with the latest technology.
HBO therapy works by surrounding a patient with 100 percent oxygen at two-and-a-half times greater than normal air pressure. The skin absorbs the air in the chamber, allowing the bloodstream to carry larger amounts of oxygen to organs and tissues in the body, which helps wounds, particularly infected wounds, heal from the inside out.
Relaxing on a bed encased within a large see-through plastic shell, patients can watch movies on televisions mounted above the chamber while hearing the movies, and conversing with others outside the chamber through a speaker system. The only physical sensation resulting from the treatment is a slight pressure on the eardrum, such as that felt when a plane lands.
HBO therapy can also be used to treat patients suffering with radiation injury, chronic bone infections, other chronic wounds and sudden sensorineural hearing loss.
The Blessing Wound Healing & Hyperbaric Center has been delivering HBO for 20 years. It also conducts vascular studies, tissue culturing and pathology, revascularization, skin grafting, and clinical or surgical debridement to treat chronic wounds. To learn more, go to blessinghealth.org/wound-care-and-hyperbaric-center.