Here’s how it works. During this treatment, you sit inside a special chamber. The air pressure inside the chamber is about two and a half times greater than the normal pressure in the atmosphere. This pressure helps your blood carry more oxygen to organs and tissues in your body.
What it achieves is worth stating carefully: hyperbaric oxygen therapy can help some wounds heal faster. Some wounds. Faster, not guaranteed.
A provider may recommend it depending on the type of wound, which means it is not a treatment every non-healing wound reaches. A wound care center may use it alongside compression stockings, ultrasound, artificial skin, negative pressure therapy, growth factor therapy and skin grafts.
It also comes up with diabetic foot ulcers. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is one of the methods a provider may use to remove dead or infected tissue, and it helps deliver more oxygen to the wound.
How long a session lasts, how many sessions are usual, who should not have it, what the side effects are, and what it feels like inside the chamber are all real questions. The unit offering the treatment can answer every one of them, and asking before starting a course is sensible.