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From Louisiana to Long Island, hyperbaric chambers, once used only to treat divers suffering from the bends, are increasingly being used to treat COVID-19 patients with surprising success.
While the numbers are small, doctors at more than a dozen hospitals across the country say hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is saving the lives of even the most critically ill coronavirus patients.
"The results thus far are pretty impressive," Dr. Thomas Serena, founder and director of the SerenaGroup, a family of wound, hyperbaric and research companies, said in a recent interview.
At NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, New York, Dr. Scott Gorenstein, the director of hyperbaric medicine, said, "I'm encouraged that hyperbaric oxygen could be a benefit."
[...] Their study compared 20 COVID-19 patients who received HBOT to 60 similar patients who did not. While their study is being peer-reviewed and has yet to be published, the results they shared are stunning.
Of the 60 patients who did NOT receive HBOT, half of them needed to be placed on ventilators and 13 died. That's a mortality rate of 22%. At the same time, the 20 patients who did receive HBOT, only two needed to be placed on ventilators and both died, which is a much lower mortality rate of 10%.
"It's small numbers," Dr. Lee noted in a cautious tone but added, "The findings suggest that hyperbaric oxygen could reduce the mortality of this disease by half."
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday July 27 2020, @02:36PM (3 children)
It seems that oxygen supply is critical in severe COVID patients.
Normal breathing involves the chest building positive pressure against the surrounding making the inside of the chest hypobaric creating a pressure gradient. CPAP ventilation increases the air pressure in the upper airway to build a gradient but has to overcome the full resistance of the total airway which makes harmful effects plausible if that resistance is increased. The hyperbaric chambers do not create an extra gradient but provide higher oxygen pressure that might help supply. This raises the question whether the iron lung could provide a benefit. The iron lung imitates normal breathing by building a hypobaric environment outside the chest. A large enough pressure gradient would still have to be build but would avoid the high baseline pressure of CPAP that is needed to keep the airway open. I could imagine that iron lung ventilation could also be beneficial in COVID patients when compared to standard CPAP ventilation. If so, it remains to develop hypobaric ventilation in a hyperbaric chamber.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2020, @03:24PM
Not trying to be a smartass here - but you'll have to wrap your mind around partial pressures to understand what the hyperbaric chamber does to and for the body. I guess wikipedia is an alright place to start, then work up from there.
My understanding is based entirely on scuba diving lessons. :^)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @04:30PM
CPAP is not high pressure at all.
Mine spends 95% of its time operating at less than 0.01 atmosphere added pressure.
This represents an "averaged peak" figure for pressure.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday July 27 2020, @05:45PM
CPAP helps with work of breathing, and keeps your airway open, but the pressure isn't that high. Hyperbaric oxygen picks up where breathing 100% O2 leaves off in helping to oxygenate your blood when the lungs aren't effective enough at gas exchange.