|
Most skin wounds heal automatically, but some stubbornly resist healing—for example, some of those that result from cancer radiation treatments or chronic infections. Fortunately, a therapy called hyperbaric medicine now offers new hope for the successful
treatment of such wounds.
In a hyperbaric therapy session, the patient typically spends an hour to an hour and a half in a chamber with extra-high oxygen content.
Martin Murphy knows. In 2006, the Toms River resident had a cancerous lesion removed from the skin of, as he puts it, “my butt.” He had squamous cell carcinoma, a common skin cancer that is usually treated successfully, as his was, by removing the lesion and then using radiation to kill any remaining cancer cells in the
surrounding tissue. Although the radiation was successful in eradicating Murphy’s cancer, it also destroyed some of the healthy surrounding tissue, leaving him with an open wound that he had to keep bandaged for three years.
Murphy, now 55, saw several doctors and plastic surgeons, none of whom could help. The reason, explains Catherine Hanlon, M.D., chairman of the Emergency Department and medical director of hyperbaric medicine at Monmouth Medical Center, was that radiation
treatment often kills the blood vessels that feed the area surrounding where the tumor grew. As a result, new tissue can’t grow, and skin grafts don’t get the blood supply they need to take hold. Murphy needed help restoring the blood supply to the wound. And that’s where hyperbaric medicine came in.
“Hyperbaric” means higher than atmospheric air pressure. Patients undergoing hyperbaric therapy sit or lie (depending on the wound site) in a fully enclosed chamber in which the air pressure is 2 to 2.5 times that of the air outdoors at sea level. The air is 100 percent
oxygen, about five times the oxygen content of ordinary air. Spending 60 to 90 minutes—a typical session—in the chamber can raise blood oxygen content significantly.
“Normal oxygen content is measured at about 90 to 100 millimeters of pressure in the blood,” says Dr. Hanlon. “If you just breathe pure oxygen through a mask, you can get that up to 200 millimeters. But when you add the extra air pressure, you can drive oxygen content
to 1,200 or 1,300 millimeters.”
The extra oxygen helps regrow new blood vessels in the vascular bed, the area in which a skin graft will be implanted. “Without a healthy vascular bed, it’s like planting seeds in concrete,” Dr. Hanlon says. That’s why Murphy’s previous skin grafts failed. But after 40 90-minute hyperbaric sessions (he went five days a week for
eight weeks) his wound had improved enough to allow his plastic surgeon to apply a graft in December. Next came another 10 sessions of hyperbaric therapy to continue the healing process.
The results have been “amazing,” says Murphy, who underwent one final operation on March 13. Since July he has been on medical leave from his job as a route salesman for a food manufacturer. “Driving a truck was tough,” he says. “I couldn’t sit for long.” But with his
wound healing at last, he was scheduled to return to driving
his route this May.
“I can’t wait to get back to work,” he says.
To find out more about the Wound Treatment Center and hyperbaric oxygen therapy at Monmouth Medical Center, please call
1-888-724-7123.
[ top ] [ back to
News Index ] |
|
|
