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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:14PM (2 children)
The problem I see for that is that planes and subs are made to be crushed by higher pressures on the outside. Hyperbaric chambers would blow out with the higher pressures on the inside. The forces and strains on the materials involved are much different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:32PM (1 child)
Planes at altitude have higher pressure inside than outside. And the pressures we are talking about are equivalent to a 10 meter dive (2 atm), so pretty sure subs would be accidentally designed to handle this despite being meant to have higher pressure outside.
In this interview they say the planes are routinely pressurized on the ground as part of maintenance: https://www.hbotnews.org/dr-ted-fogarty-makes-his-case-to-trump-for-his-covid-19-solution/ [hbotnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 27 2020, @09:21PM
I'm pretty sure most modern subs operate at atmospheric pressures (operating at ambient pressures would mean taking many, many hours to surface to prevent sailors getting the bends).
However, *all* subs are designed to dive, and they only have to dive a few dozen meters to ensure the external pressure exceeds whatever internal pressure they want. Might be some issues with some sealed equipment imploding under the pressure though.