Thursday, 12 February 2015

Dangers To Address Prior To Hyperbaric Facility Planning

By Janine Hughes


The health benefits of oxygen have long been known, but in the medical community this notion has been taken to the next level. Patients seek less invasive treatments for illnesses, even though some of these treatments also carry a measure of risk. In this climate, it is necessary for an up-and-coming provider of holistic as well as allopathic medicine to educate themselves before hyperbaric facility planning.

There will be codes and probably a license of some sort just to be able to store large quantities of pure oxygen on-site. These codes may well vary from state-to-state due to a variety of reasons. Whatever rules individual states must follow, it is due to the combustibility and explosive quality of oxygen canisters.

These chambers are often found in acute care centers along the coast because the treatment has been FDA-approved for the treatment of decompression sickness. This condition happens to divers who come up to the surface too quickly. Success has also been met with the use of this treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning, and the FDA does recommend attempting to treat these patients in a chamber to see if they can get the patient breathing again.

Individuals run the risk of believing the treatment alone will cure them because they feel better. Utilizing an holistic treatment rather than continuing with scheduled chemo or other treatment can have potentially fatal results. There is no proof that these chambers can even treat, let alone cure diabetes, cancer, aging, depression, or autism.

Although research is still being done, because it is a benign treatment that truly makes patients feel better, many people suffering serious illness seek these chambers. Anything that can make a cancer patient feel better is generally regarded as a positive thing. However, patients are cautioned to continue their chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy if that is the treatment they agreed to in the beginning.

There are some health risks associated with this type of oxygen therapy, and patients should be aware of them. Seizures have been reported occurring as a result of high-oxygen saturation. Roughly ten percent of patients experience some form of seizure, so many facilities now require a ten minute period on room air for every hour and a half they spend in the chamber.

Oddly enough, temporary near-sightedness, also known as myopia, can occur as a side-effect of multiple long sessions in the chamber. By temporary, this generally means literally weeks or months of lessened visual acuity, potentially requiring corrective lenses which may have to be changed frequently. This comes as a real shock to patients who have had their vision corrected with Lasik.

This therapy has also been blamed for damage occurring to the inner ear. This can cause the patient to become unbalanced or uncoordinated, suffering from bouts of vertigo for seemingly no reason. There is no data at this time to indicate that this damage heals itself over time, and it is most certainly caused by the increased pressure which is achieved within the chamber itself. This side-effect is particularly dangerous due to the fact that the patients who seek this treatment most, the elderly and infirm, are the ones most likely to suffer serious injuries from a fall.




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