Getting the right care for slow-healing wounds is important. Some Ascension sites of care offer advanced wound-care treatments, such as hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) to help promote healing. When your wound isn’t healing, our wound care team is here to help.
Advanced wound healing with hyperbaric oxygen therapy
If you have a slow-healing wound, your doctor may recommend HBOT as part of your care plan. As you sit or lie inside an oxygen-rich chamber, increased amounts of pure oxygen fill your lungs and enter your bloodstream. This concentrated oxygen, used to speed up the healing process, helps heal wounds from the inside out. This advanced therapy helps encourage healing of infections, foot ulcers caused by diabetes, slow-healing wounds, burns and skin grafts. This therapy can also be used to help you recover from decompression illness, carbon monoxide poisoning and more.
Hyperbaric chamber therapy is used to treat many conditions
Our wound care doctors use hyperbaric oxygen therapy to help treat many adult health conditions including:
- Anemia and blood loss
- Bubbles of air in your blood vessels (arterial gas embolism)
- Burns, including radiation injury
- Carbon monoxide poisoning
- Crush injury to skin or bone
- Decompression sickness
- Some non-healing wounds (diabetic foot)
- Gangrene
- Infection of skin (graft)
- Some cases of bone infection or non-healing bones
What to expect during an HBOT session
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy usually requires multiple sessions. Chamber interiors are comfortable and often designed so you can listen to music, watch movies or nap. Before your first treatment, a specially trained nurse will teach you a few simple techniques to avoid potential ear discomfort due to the pressurized environment. Your nurse will be available during your treatment the entire time, and a two-way intercom allows you to talk with each other. Our goal is to help prevent the need for care during a hospital stay for infection or wound-healing complications, and improve your quality of life.
