Hyperbaric medicine, also known as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, is the medical use of oxygen at pressures above atmospheric pressure. In the beginning was used to treat divers suffering from decompensation, and currently is used to work in a complementary way in some treatments, such as tissue repair, the carbon monoxide poisoning and trauma, among others.
We identified two types of hyperbaric therapy: the diving medicine and hyperbaric oxygenation, both with similar features, albeit with specific targets, because the first question to those persons engaged in submarine work and second, to patients with certain diseases.
The baromedicine born after the change suffered by the environmental conditions of human labor. So with the start of work in hyperbaric environments, it became necessary this kind of treatment by the frequency of decompression illness in divers.
Since the concern was for those underwater workers, whom the rise to the surface are caused decompression depressurized when the nitrogen content in their bodies, they began to use elements such as diving suits or watertight boxes that supporters who complied with this kind of work.
Evolution of oxygen therapy
In this context, as it was investigating more on this topic, the experts found that oxygen had multiple therapeutic benefits, including his contribution to the healing of wounds and treat infections.
Other functions where oxygen is considered beneficial, they have to do with the high incidence of hypoxic tissues, where it is possible to restore normal gas over the area. Then it will be in degenerative iútil as atherosclerosis, vascular damage from diabetes, vascular lesions due to injuries, burns, colds, including where the affected area is hypoxic.
Other benefits of hyperbaric oxygen are the development of blood vessels (neovascularization) and its potent effect on the body’s defense regarding the activity of white blood cells. Thus the oxygen has also called add with time allowed for many more diseases, which are treated in conjunction with traditional medicine to help patients regain their health.
In this regard, the Undersea & Hyperbaric Medical Society UHMS, medical society that currently regulates the way it conducts hyperbaric medicine in the world, reports that some of the thirteen diseases can now be treated in a hyperbaric chamber are poisonings carbon monoxide, diabetic foot, the “killer bacteria” burn injuries and radiation therapy, brain abscess, bad for decompression, gas gangrene, among others.
According to a note taken from the New York Times, the news portal Servicioweb U.S. announced that eleven of these diseases have already been approved by the Medicare system for reimbursement, which indicates that there is solid evidence to support the use of oxygen HBO.
Reviews and criticism
Despite the benefits of hyperbaric medicine, the left shows that this would be a therapy that could contribute much more than it currently does, there are several criticisms that mention that this procedure would not have a sufficient basis for further sustainable spreading .
These comments relate most often to certain clinics around the world listed among their oxygen therapy for treating diseases like fibromyalgia, autism, chronic fatigue, multiple sclerosis and many others, including some cosmetic treatments which certainly not on the list that keeps UHMS published.
There are also medical sources who claim that the results are not equal in all patients, so that the effectiveness of therapy and the lack of clinical studies that substantiate its benefits, would be one of its major shortcomings.
Against these assertions, it should be clear that HBO is not a harmless gas, is considered a drug and therefore is thought of as the application of a beneficial substance for human body under certain conditions of diseases, which are is standardized and docketed, therefore, while some groups of people get better with this or other therapy, there may be cases where the results are the same.
Contraindication of baromedicine
It is not sufficient to list the benefits of treatment with oxygen at high pressures, like any other procedure it is contraindicated in people suffering from claustrophobia, which have ear problems, epilepsy or suffer from untreated severe chronic lung disease, and in people under treatment with anticancer drugs.
In relation to possible risks associated with the manner in which pressure is delivered in a hyperbaric chamber, it should be mentioned that if a person is incorporated into this treatment, he was not put either at the same time and at the same depth in the working divers. For this there are tables that govern treatment of the conditions that must be done in therapy.
Finally, against the benefits that some claim can be obtained with baromedicine, it is necessary to note that in many cases offer only false treatments and hyperbaric medicine as such is not to breathe oxygen-enriched air, is a treatment to be performed by a physician with specialized equipment.