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: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @12:21PM (9 children)
Side effects [hopkinsmedicine.org]
Supplementary, no DOI in TFA.
Picture me not convinced (yet).
PS ah, yes. Remember to not build any electrostatic charge while inside HBOT chamber; in spite of the amount of water, burning the human body is overall exothermic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @12:51PM (3 children)
More to the point: don't go putting yourself in a more-dangerous-than-Apollo-1 oxygen environment managed by a low budget operation with under-trained operators, it can go very poorly, it has gone very poorly, but high numbers of people have also done it quite safely.
As always, it's a question of cost/risk vs benefit. Both sides are somewhat fuzzy on their definitions and data - science and statistics are not yet ready to guide the decision to HBOT or not.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @01:13PM (2 children)
So... Don't smoke a cigarette while oxybathing?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @05:48PM (1 child)
in Soviet Russia hyperbaric chamber, cigarette smokes you!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday July 28 2020, @03:30PM
Would have been funnier without the word cigarette.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2020, @03:11PM (4 children)
Alrighty. Having a diver's license (PADI sport diving, open water) exposes a person to the concept of partial pressures of gases. You become aware that normal atmosphere under pressure can burn your lungs out, if you're diving deep. That's why they have special gas mixtures for the deep sea divers - which I am not.
Anyway, you made me look around some.
The Mayo Clinic says that HBOT is routinely conducted at 3 atmos. That burning of the lungs, etc, is not even a concern.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy/about/pac-20394380 [mayoclinic.org]
I'd have to do some more searching to determine at what pressure said burning becomes a real concern - at least 6 atmos, I think, probably 10 or more. And, I'm quite certain that the techs operating these hypobaric chambers are well versed in partial pressures, and will control the oxygen content to get the desired effects.
I don't think you need to worry that Grandma might come out of the chamber crispy fried because of a random static discharge. ;^)
Final thought: Don't you think they would take precautions to prevent possible static discharge if they were to jack the pressure up to 20 atmospheres or more?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @04:33PM (3 children)
Because the only way grandma can catch fire is by her lungs starting to burn, right?
Since you're allegedly so knowledgeable in things pertaining Navy here's an article in Undersea Hyper Med 1997 [uhms.org]. Note the 1975/CA "Suspected electrostatic charge when diver separated wood and synthetic sweaters" on page 2.
Ummm...
A grandma and her grandsun burning for 5 minutes due to electrostatic discharge inside HBO in 3atm or less of oxygen [sun-sentinel.com]. So, one more thought from you if you don't mind: what d'you reckon, since grandmas are safe until 20 atmospheres or more, perhaps it was the grand son that was the source of ignition? Because surely they took all the other precautions, no?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2020, @05:31PM (2 children)
The Sun Sentinel article is unreliable as all hell, starting with
No pure oxygen in a pressure chamber - it's some kind of a mixed atmosphere. As bad as the article starts out, it does go on to cite a number of safety violations, such as the chambers not being grounded, faulty electrical work in and around the chambers, lack of maintenance records - and much more. Sensationalist reporting, on a crazy substandard facility.
The PDF is very informative. It puts the lie to the above claim of a pure oxygen atmosphere, early on.
I'm having problems copying text from the PDF, but the introduction is relevant here: Chamber fires before 1980 were caused by electrical shorts, and since 1980, fires caused by prohibited sources of ignition carried into the chamber. That same introduction goes on to distinguish between oxygen enriched atmospheres >= 28% and normal atmospheres, 23.5% oxygen.
I can see that I should have put a "properly maintained and operated facility" somewhere in my earlier statement. I will do so here:
In a properly maintained and operated modern (less than 30 years old) facility, Grandma has just about zero chance of causing a fire with static electricity. Far more likely that she starts a fire by sneaking in a cigarette and a lighter.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @06:20PM (1 child)
Pick whatever other sources of info you trust [google.com] the accident happened. By criminal negligence. Perhaps you trust the health news Florida [usf.edu]?
Under critical level of use and under the operations of an overworked personnel? For how long you reckon they'll stay "properly maintained and operated"? I won't bet for longer that a couple of months.
---
I admit this looks a better, cheaper and safer approach [soylentnews.org] to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:34PM
We get it, we get it. You have a mortal fear of probabilities. Just sign the damn do-not-store-hyperbaric form, file it next to your do-not-resuscitate form and let the adults have a normal conversation.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday July 27 2020, @01:06PM (26 children)
Everything that works is nice I guess. But if this is the thing that worked one might be in even more trouble then with the ventilators, cause there are a lot more of them then there are hyperbaric (or diving) chambers available. It probably won't be very efficient either if you just send one patient in at a time cause you can't just show all the sick people in as a group, I guess.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 27 2020, @01:56PM (2 children)
Yes. Hyperbaric chambers are a lot more expensive than ventilators. And require more room to use/store.
OTOH, I suspect that the benefit would be obtained with a very mild increase in pressure, it's not like they're treating the bends.
OTTH, there's a question of how long the patients would need to be kept under pressure. One of the reasons ventilators were so deadly was the amount of time patients had to be one them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @07:40PM (1 child)
Between ventilator and HBOT, I'd 1000% prefer to be treated with HBOT.
Modern ventilators are still crude devices which can easily, and often do, cause internal injuries... while they are saving your life.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:26PM
Yes, there are anecdotes of covid patients asking to go back in the HBOT chambers because it was so calm and peaceful. No one has ever said that about a ventilator.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @02:03PM (5 children)
I suspect that the treatment is limited in time, pure oxygen is toxic [sciencefocus.com] in prolonged exposures.
This means there could be 10-15 patients/day in round robin allocation per chamber.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday July 27 2020, @02:15PM
Perhaps, but for interest I looked up how many chambers was available in my region and for the civilian medical sector it wasn't exactly a lot of them -- which is reasonable. I suspect that the military naval base might have some that are suited for more then one patient (or diver) at a time. The normal treatment took 2h and had to be repeated multiple times. So it's hard to say how long this would require but say if you can cut out at least a few minutes on each the question might be if they have to do it over and over again. Then there really is very limited availability if a lot of people would need this. But I guess some is better then none.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:28PM (3 children)
Hmm. How about using hyperbaric air instead of hyperbaric oxygen? Or use a concentration of oxygen less than 100%.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday July 27 2020, @05:16PM (2 children)
If you have an inert gas in the hyperbaric atmosphere, you have to follow a decompression protocol to avoid giving the patient the bends.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @05:57PM (1 child)
A 2 atm chamber is like a 10 meter dive. Decompression isn't needed for that: https://www.scubadivingearth.com/how-deep-can-you-dive-without-decompression-no-decompression-stop-limits/. [scubadivingearth.com]
Nevertheless I'm sure they do gradually reduce the pressure over the course of a few minutes.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday July 29 2020, @03:31AM
True for a 2 ATM chamber for someone in reasonable health. Some treatments call for greater pressure, and I'm not sure if there's a problem when the patient is hypercoagulable (a problem with COVID).
Of course, many chambers use air but provide 100% O2 through a mask.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 27 2020, @02:06PM (15 children)
>cause you can't just show all the sick people in as a group, I guess.
Why not?
I mean obviously it depends on the size of the chamber, but so long as the chamber is big enough I don't see a problem - social distancing isn't relevant to people who are already infected, and having at least one functional person in the chamber could be a good idea in case anyone needs urgent medical attention* - it's not like you can just open the door and help out if someone has problems. Though I suspect a lot of chambers are single-patient sized since there's not normally a huge amount of demand.
Perhaps we can get SpaceX to build a bunch of stainless steel chambers - they've already got the production facilities for large pressure chambers capable of withstanding much higher pressures, and there's a lot fewer medically sensitive fiddly bits than in ventilators.
*come to think of it, given the number of people who never develop life-threatening symptoms, but still have a long recovery time before they stop being contagious, it seems like there's a huge opportunity to recruit them as assistants to relieve the strain on the professionals - they can be simultaneously quarantined while moving freely amongst the incapacitated patients without fear of infection. You probably wouldn't want them giving injections or engaging in other activities that are potentially lethal without proper training, but a whole lot of caring for sick people is basically cleaning and room service.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday July 27 2020, @02:18PM (14 children)
Fair point. I found it somewhat interesting so I looked up how many of these the region I'm in have for civilian medical use -- it seems they are all single person chambers and there was not a lot of them. But I suspect the Naval base might have at least one or two that could take more then one diver at a time. But still it's a very limited quantity of spaces available if this works, but I guess some is better then none.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:44PM (13 children)
You could also pressurize airplanes and roll the patients in there.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday July 27 2020, @02:50PM (3 children)
If that could done one could more or less have solved the scalability factor of the problem, cause if you can treat 100+ people at a time then you might be in business so to speak. Considering how air travel companies are now seeing massive downturns in travel and flying I guess there shouldn't be to many issues finding suitable aircrafts to use either. It should be easier to find a suitable aircraft then say a submarine.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday July 27 2020, @08:11PM (1 child)
I like the idea, but avoid the 737 and 777 as those have a proven track records for generating engineering case studies. Perhaps the older 747 air frames would work better, especially the double-decker versions as you can designate the upper level for staff only.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 27 2020, @09:15PM
Shouldn't be much of an issue sitting on the ground. Cabins very rarely spontaneously lose pressure, and if they do... then you've got what, a mild case of bends? Heck, if you've been breathing nearly pure oxygen I don't think even that's an issue, since you haven't been dissolving pressurized nitrogen into your bloodstream.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @10:57AM
Hey, a use for the Boeing 737 Max where it won't dive into the ground.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2020, @03:15PM (2 children)
I don't know if that's genius level thinking or not - but it certainly deserves a touche mod. I'd have never thought of it!!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @03:19PM
People have been talking about doing that for awhile: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/aircraft-hbot-hyperbaric-oxygen-chambers/ [theengineer.co.uk]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @11:57PM
Classic Runaway!
May I suggest an "off-topic"? Possibly an "apropos of nothing", if we had such a mod.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @03:25PM (5 children)
Nice idea and could be helpful, but imo there aren't any pressurized aircraft that can take 3 atmospheres (as quoted elsewhere). So you could raise the fraction of O2, but not at very high pressures. This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_pressurization [wikipedia.org] suggests that the remaining Concorde SSTs (at various museums?) would be good candidates, they operated at higher altitude and thus higher pressurization than sub-sonic jets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @03:49PM
They use 1.5-2 atm from what Ive read.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday July 27 2020, @03:57PM (3 children)
How about a submarine? Wouldn't that stand up to said pressure. You just have to disconnect and remove all the secret equipment first.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:30PM
Luckily the hyperbaric treatment has caught on as a health fad, so that there are more facilities around the country.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:22PM (5 children)
This is a safe and cheap treatment that makes perfect sense, not a dangerous expensive treatment. Here is how it works:
There are both single and multiperson chambers (up to a dozen patients). The patients are put in there for 1-2 hours per day, for 5 days. It takes another half hour to sanitize the chamber between patients. They get better *immediately*. Nothing is going to explode because the chamber is filled with air, not pure O2. The patient wears an O2 mask if higher O2 concentration is also desired. What happens is the higher pressure pushes oxygen to be dissolved directly in the blood, thereby bypassing hemoglobin and resolving the hypoxia.
Basically, this should get you very excited unless you care more about your pharma stocks than helping people.
Here's the first study from China: https://www.ihausa.org/covid19-hyperbaric-therapy/ [ihausa.org]
And here's some data from the US: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32412891/ [nih.gov]
Keep in mind, these doctors are not backed by billions in funding!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @07:42PM (1 child)
During hyperbarics' heyday, there were massive hyperbaric facilities planned - multiple floors with multiple rooms on each floor at elevated pressure.
The cost never balanced with the benefit, HBOT is mostly dismissed as "only useful for the bends" these days, and since you can't deliver it as a pill or an injection - commercialization is unlikely.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:46PM
Sure, but the unique thing about this illness is the "happy hypoxia" like seen at high altitude. The patients are still relatively ok but have very low oxygen saturation and may suddenly get worse. There has never been a more obvious application of HBOT to keep the tissue oxygenated, and there are multiple reports of *immediate* improvement. Its obvious many of the symptoms are due to low oxygen levels in the various tissues of the body.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:19PM (2 children)
A non-randomized n of 5 and you may want to look into the author affiliations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:41PM (1 child)
Use some intuition. This treatment is tailor made for covid, which is an illness that mimics high altitude sickness (small blood clots mimic nitrogen bubbles).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @06:17AM
Intuition, eh? In that case, COVID causes people to cough and honey helps with coughs. Therefore, we should give hospital patients massive doses of honey. In fact, let me hand pick my sample and I'll even guarantee you none of them will die.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @06:44PM (2 children)
At least it's not quinine! But this is alternative medicine, and you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Yes, "Medicine". Michael Jackson used to use this to cure his, um, disease. Worked fine, until his doctor medicated him a little too much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @06:48PM (1 child)
You deny that hbot gets oxygen into the body? Or that covid patients have low oxygen levels?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:19PM
The guy you replied to sounds like one of those who yells "SCIENCE!" whenever he wants to stop any thought or discussion over something he believes. He believes it because somebody TOLD HIM it was true, not because he actually thought about it and kept up with the experimental evidence coming in over time. They are incurious people who don't know that science is basically an iterative process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:19PM (10 children)
It has been proposed and tried here in Europe.
Short summary:
It looks good if and only if you dont understand a lot about hyperbaric therapy (and that surely includes most doctors!!!, although not these here) and the workings of the virus.
It works for some patients, but it is highly doubtful whether it works better, or even as good as, a respirator. You cannot try bothe treatments on the same patients, and no study with big enough numbers has been done. All evidence is anecdotal.
Most significantly, side-effects (a.k.a. severe lung damage) have been observed after the patient's corona infection has subsided. The corona is gone, but so is a third of the lung. It is unclear whether these effects could have been prevented by using a respirator instead of HBOT, but HBOT practitioners strongly suggest the damage is caused indirectly by the interplay between corona and high oxygen levels.
It is very likely that the treatment choice between HBOT and respirator was not made free from other considerations ... perhaps the HBOT group would also have done much better on a respirator. Not only better than the control group, but perhaps even better than with HBOT.
Putting it all together you get about an 80%-sure statement of "even if it might seem to work at first, you're actually making things worse with HBOT for many patients". It might work for a handful of patients with select conditions, but we have no idea what these are. And finding them ruins live people.
Here in Europe, nobody is doing HBOT for corona. Not because we're too stupid to try (we did!), but for damned good reasons.
The above article reads exactly like those we had over here, in February. I'm not altogether clear on why the quoted hyperbaric doctors are disregarding these results and doing it all over. Very likely to the detriment of their patients.
(and I don't want to entertain the thought that immediately springs to mind)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:29PM (2 children)
The number of patients in the study was small, as the doctors admit, but it is NOT true that there was no control group for comparison. While it's pretty hard to find an exact match of a treated patient to use as a control, they did their best.
And you say that other studies showed patients surviving a bad COVID infection but with huge lung damage... you are assuming they would have lived without the hyperbaric treatment or some alternative treatment. How do you know that? You can't. It may be the price for surviving is some lung damage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @10:05PM (1 child)
It may be the price, and it may be not. I personally cannot tell, see my other comment about my sources, so I will not argue the point.
Fact is: HBOT was tried here. And then, after some trials, it was never heard of again. Presumably because it worked worse than the respirators, I'd think.
Now, perhaps those two doctors found something new, and that would be great! But perhaps they're just repeating the mistakes already made once, then that would (on average) be to the detriment of their current patients, being treated with a known-worse method.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @10:14PM
Well the problem is no one is telling anyone about the studies you refer to. We have no details at all. But there are multiple studies published claiming benefit that were published. This will be the third I know of.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:29PM (6 children)
Can you share a link to these results? I have been following closely and have not heard about this, I doubt these doctors have heard it either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:49PM (5 children)
Sorry, no, I can't link or quote.
My knowledge is paraphrased from a talk+questions by a hyperbaric doctor who's following developments closely (he said then), although not a researcher himself. It is also a few months old by now. But the fact remains that hyperbaric chambers are back open for business, and that business is not covid19 (I visited one a short time ago). And it never was. I gather the Italians and Spanish would have used those chambers ... instead of letting people die from lack of ventilators ....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:56PM (4 children)
Well, I don't think these results have been publicized at all then. Even in the news, so it is no surprise people have not heard about it. They should be encouraged to publish about their experience in some way, even if it is just a blog post somewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @10:18PM (3 children)
Knowing the person giving the talk (no, I will absolutely not put the name in a public forum), he definitely had published sources on which he formed is publicly pronounced opinion.
That you have not seen them may or may not constitute a statement about the absolute availability. It may also constitue a statement about your following of publications. Have you considered that the publications may be in other languages? I know for a fact that English, Spanish, German, and Polish are on the table for this one.
And don't tell me that English is the one, true language. During a pandemic situation, a doctor surely could be forgiven to publish a quick notice only in his native tongue, instead of taking the time to do a reasonably good translation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @10:47PM (2 children)
If you can find out I would be very interested to see these sources. I am sure the doctors involved in the OP study would like to see them as well. As you said, patients may be harmed due to lack of availability of these results so they should be widely shared and discussed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @11:17PM (1 child)
I might give it a try, but please don't get your hopes up at all (many reasons, none fit for publication here).
Using the words "Covid19", "hyperbaric" and "diving" (important!) should, hopefully, set the right triggers for an email inquiry to the Landeskrankenhaus Innsbruck (general hospital in Innsbruck, Austria) to reach the correct person there. Once you have him/her, ask away, no need for "diving" anymore.
Sorry for the roundabout way, but this still is the internet ... :-(
If you are a medical professional, this should work out. If you are "just interested", it still may, but no guarantees.
Hope that helps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @01:45AM
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wetnotes.eu%2Ftauchen-nach-covid-19-erkrankung%2F [google.com]
I'm guessing you are talking about this. That sounds like he is talking about a problem with getting supplementary oxygen and assuming hbot will be the same.
I've been saying for awhile that the oxygen should be increased gradually, or else you get a form of reverse altitude sickness or reperfusion injury. If the tissue is already adapted to low oxygen you should not suddenly increase it, just like you should not quickly descend a mountain either. I think this is another common medical error that is harming covid patients.
HBOT practitioners already know to gradually increase the pressure though, so I think this is less likely in that case. But by the time they see these patients the damage may have already been done simply via the oxygen mask.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday July 28 2020, @12:44AM (1 child)
What was the pressure in the hyperbaric chamber? What was the partial pressure of oxygen? What inert gas was used, or were they just using compressed air?
Could a high oxygen environment at STP have been as useful as a hyperbaric chamber?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @04:11AM
Probably similar to these studies: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=38685&page=1&cid=1027103#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Here is another: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32574433/ [nih.gov]