Hyperbaric Chamber Oxygen Therapy

Hyperbaric Chamber Oxygen Therapy – or so my friend Mia and I so aptly call it, the Chamber of Secrets, haha. What goes on in this Chamber of Secrets you ask? Nobody knows! Well, I certainly didn’t, until I started my therapy one week ago today.

I have been asked LOADS of questions about the therapy, but because I am still so new to it, and when I learnt about it to decide whether or not I’d go ahead with it, it was information overload. Plus it can be quite technical stuff!

The following information has been taken directly from the pamphlet provided to me by the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH). The following information written in italics is courtesy of the Hyperbaric Medicine Unit.

This unit is a centre of excellence and serves not only as a treatment centre for South Australia, but as the control centre for the National Divers’ Emergency Centre. It collaborates with the Intensive Care Unit as part of the Department of Anaesthesia.

A hyperbaric chamber is built to withstand increased internal pressure. There are two chambers at the RAH. The Drager multiplace is approximately three metres long and two metres in diameter, divided into a smaller outer chamber and a large inner chamber. Two patients can lie in the inner chamber at one time or up to four can sit comfortably. (When I first visited the unit, this was the chamber I saw first and it scared the shit out of me! It looked like it should be a deep dark submarine, I wasn’t sure how I’d cope in there, thankfully I was quickly assured I would not be in that one – phew!).

The walk-in multiplace is a large rectangular chamber of about five metres long, three metres wide and two metres high. Access to this chamber is through a door large enough to walk through or wheel a special hyperbaric trolley. (This is the chamber where I have my treatment).

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is the administration of 100% oxygen in an environment of increased atmospheric pressure. Its purpose is to provide increased amounts of oxygen to the body. It is effective for a number of different medical and surgical conditions, either as a primary treatment (for example, for decompression illness) or as an additional therapy with other treatments, such as antibiotics or surgery.

The air we breathe normally consists of approximately 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen. During therapy, the pressure is increased two to three times more than normal and you will breathe 100% oxygen. The combination of high concentration of oxygen and increased pressure causes large amounts of oxygen to be dissolved in your blood and other tissues. There can be as much as 10 to 15 times the usual amount of oxygen dissolved in your blood, which then delivers more oxygen to the rest of your body.

Once you are in the chamber and the door is closed, you will hear the noise of air flow as the chamber operator starts a gradual increase in pressure. This is called compression.

Air temperature will increase as the chamber is compressed, but this will settle down once you reach the treatment “depth”.

A nurse who is educated in hyperbaric medicine will remain with you in the chamber throughout the treatment.

Before I had commenced my therapy, I knew very little about it. I knew the chambers were used in emergency situations when divers had come up to sea level too quickly, but otherwise I had no clue.

A number of different problems have been shown to benefit from the therapy, or are under investigation. Some of the most common are decompression illness (also known as the bends), carbon monoxide poisoning, non-healing infected wound (especially in diabetes), osteomyelitis (bone infection), radiation injury to a bone or soft tissue and gas embolisms.

In my case, I am trying the therapy with hope that it will heal a wound that hasn’t healed since surgery in November 2016. My surgeon said my recovery from that operation would be 6-8 WEEKS … I am now 7 and a half MONTHS post-surgery and still haven’t healed. My wound has been exposed to sepsis and ongoing infection, the tissue is so damaged and my whole situation has become so complicated that my own surgeon is out of ideas. I also saw one of Adelaide’s top plastic surgeon’s and he too isn’t really sure what to do about me.

I have also seen one of Adelaide’s top infectious disease specialists in the hope that we can get this ongoing infection under control.

So I am basically hoping like I’ve never hoped before, that this therapy works… I am all out of options.

I am currently six sessions down, with another 34 sessions left to go. It is a huge investment in time, but it is something I am willing to try, even though there is no guarantee at the end of this that it’ll work.

My new routine now consists of getting to the RAH by 10.15am every single day from Monday to Friday, then Saturdays I have to be there by 8.15am. I change into the clothing that they provide, as we have to be wearing 100% cotton in the chamber.

Because of the use of a higher concentration of oxygen inside the chamber, fire safety precautions are essential. You will need to wear 100% cotton clothing. Shoes cannot be worn in the chamber and watches, hearing aids and prosthetic devices also have to be left outside. Please do not wear make-up or any petroleum-based cream. Hair and cosmetics that are oil based are also not allowed.

By 10.30am I enter the chamber with a book and some magazines, as well as several other patients and a nurse. The first five or so minutes while we go into compression stage, are the hardest for me as far as my ears go. It is nothing major, but I have to keep swallowing to help unblock my ears. This is completely normal, the other patients in the chamber with me, as well as the nurse, spend those five minutes unblocking our ears.

Once we have reached treatment depth, which is equivalent to being 10 metres below sea level, the patients are fitted with special dome type helmets that are see through and quite firm around the neck. The nurse does not wear one of these. This allows the patients to get even more oxygen.

Halfway through the treatment we get a short five minute break, our domes are removed and we can have a drink and some biscuits and then they’re put back on. I fill my time reading the many magazines that my friends have dropped off to me, as well as reading books. I am comfortable on a recliner and I am in there for two hours at a time. I don’t find that the time goes slow (probably because it’s still early days for me) nor am I ever uncomfortable in there.

There is a nurse in the chamber at all times, who has direct communication with the specialised doctors, nurses and technicians on the outside. There are also video cameras so that the doctor and technician in charge can see what is happening in the chamber at all times.

Once the two hours is up, we simply leave the chamber, get changed back into our own clothes and leave.

Last week as our treatment was starting to finish up and we were slowing being brought back up to normal atmospheric pressure, I could hear the faint sound of the hospital’s evacuation alarms. I asked the nurse inside, what would happen if we were mid-treatment and the evacuation alarms went off, because we can’t just rip our helmets off and hurry out the chamber, we would need to be slowly brought back to normal pressure. The nurse told me that we are actually safer in the chamber, than out. We would only ever evacuate if the firemen came in and told us it was time we needed to be out.

I also learnt last week that there must be a doctor in there overseeing the treatment at all times. On Friday, the doctor had called in sick, so my treatment was cancelled. There must always specialised nurses and technicians on hand. Never ever do they cut any corners, and they always do safety checks before each session.

At only six sessions in, I cannot tell you if I am noticing an improvement. This is a lengthy process but something I will be sure to keep you all updated on as the weeks progress – wish me luck!