What is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)?

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is a non-invasive therapy. In its clinical applications, the patient breathes 100% oxygen while fully enclosed in a specially designed chamber at ambient pressures up to three times normal atmospheric pressure. HBOT is used to promote and support healing in the management of conditions in which oxygen transport to the tissues has been disrupted by traumatic injury, infection, inflammation, or edema.
 
How does clinical HBOT work?
Inadequate oxygenation occurs in tissue compromised by infection, traumatic injury, hypoxia, inflammation, and edema. At normal atmospheric pressure, the oxygen needed for tissue metabolism is carried in the blood in chemical combination with hemoglobin in the red cells. Only an insignificant amount is physically dissolved in the blood plasma. Because of increased diffusion distances caused by such factors such as circulatory disruption and edema, the pressure-dependent gradient necessary for oxygen to dissociate from hemoglobin and diffuse from the blood plasma into the tissues may be inadequate to deliver sufficient amounts of oxygen to support basic metabolism. If physiologically significant amounts of oxygen are dissolved in the plasma at a pressure far in excess of the normal arterial PO2 of 100 mmHg, however, this will cause the oxygen to diffuse over much greater distances and support both basic tissue metabolism and healing processes left wanting by oxygen carried on hemoglobin.
 
During an HBO treatment, as ambient pressure in the chamber is increased, the amount of oxygen entering into solution in plasma also increases. At 1 ATA (atmospheres absolute) the volume of oxygen in solution in plasma is 0.3 ml/100ml. When breathing oxygen at 3 ATA, the arterial PO2 is increased to 2200 mmHg and the volume in solution rises 22 times to 6.6 ml/100ml. It has been shown that under these circumstances, oxyhemoglobin passes unchanged through the capillaries since the volume of oxygen physically dissolved in solution at this pressure is sufficient to meet tissue demand without dissociation from hemoglobin.
 
The primary effect of administering oxygen at greater than normal atmospheric pressure, then, is to dissolve physiologically significant amounts at much increased partial pressures in the blood plasma. The higher plasma oxygen tension increases the rate and distance that oxygen diffuses from patent capillaries across the barriers created by edema and poor perfusion. Thus, oxygen becomes more readily available to tissues affected by disease or traumatic injury even when blood flow to those areas is impaired and red cells are not able to pass through restricted capillary beds. This facilitates healing through enhanced macrophage function, fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis, angiogenesis, and epithelialization.