BESSEMER, Ala. (CBS 42 Living Local) – Medical West Hospital is changing lives through hyperbaric oxygen therapy at the Advanced Wound Center. Inside each tubular chamber, 100% oxygen is applied to patients under pressure. When pressure is used, oxygen can travel throughout blood plasma and tissues.
“When this happens and incredible thing happens called angiogenesis,” said Hyperbaric Tech, Stacy Phillips. “If you push on your fingers, you see them blanch white and then turn back red. This is your capillary bed, the tiniest blood vessels in our body. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is the only known thing in science actually to regrow (capillary beds) if they’re damaged.”
Charlene Dalton is an enthusiastic patient that has received over 60-treatments. “The first thing it looked like to me was a snow-white chamber,” Dalton said. Dalton is currently undergoing therapy for a foot infection. The infection was so severe that doctors thought they might have to amputate some of her toes.
“The chamber saved them,” Dalton said.
Patients like Dalton even joke that this therapy is their ‘spa treatment’. During treatment, they have two uninterrupted hours where they can watch a movie or take a nap.
“A lot of times, it can take 30 to 60 treatments. So it’s a time commitment. But it regrows that capillary bed,” Phillips said. “We make a plan, and they do this 30 to 60 times. It regrows the blood vessels and regrowth the tissue, and they’re healed.”
Read the fill article: https://www.cbs42.com/cbs-42-living-local/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy-offered-at-medical-west-hospital/