The Hyperbaric Chamber

Product Description
The Hyprbaric Chamber: Science, Not Miracle, is a comprehensible exposition readily accessible to the general reader, of the principal applications of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, its technique, and its results. Information provided in this book is an excellent reference for interested persons and for health care professionals.
Review
The hyperbaric chamber became popular at the first half of the 20th century because of its efficacy in decompression sickness, health and life threatening complication in divers. At the second half of the last century the hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT) was studied and applied in different pathologies, such as gas gangrene, carbon monoxide poisoning, radiation necrosis, thermal burns, diabetic foot ulcers and crush injury. Nowadays there are some authors that report the efficacy of hyperbaric chamber in Alzheimer disease, multiple sclerosis, alcohol abuse and so on. However, this issue, as the same author s book for physicians Hyperbaric medicine written in Spanish, describes only treatment of pathologies endorsed by evidence based medicine, practice that requires integration of the clinical picture of the individual patient with the best evidence derived from the systematic studies. The pathologies enounced for HBOT in this book reflect the actual state of knowledge in this specialty. Because of the broad use of HBOT in cerebral palsy and autism the author mentions this indication explaining the real state of things. The physical and biological principles of the hyperbaric oxygen therapy are simple and well studied. The main task of our circulatory system is to carry oxygen from lungs to each cell in the organism. The hyperbaric chamber permits to do it in more efficiently on the basis of the laws of physics: under pressure the gases are getting more soluble in liquids. The liquids are blood or plasma, the gas to be dissolved oxygen inhaled directly or by mask inside the hyperbaric chamber. The cells that suffered from lack of oxygen, in most cases due to circulatory problems, recover enabling healing. The best proof of the hyperbaric oxygen therapy efficacy is the reimbursement of this treatment that is accepted in many countries. It is cost effective, the patients are cured more rapidly and the total expenditure of their health care diminishes. Particularly in US the HBOT is officially recognized for air or gas embolism, carbon monoxide poisoning, carbon monoxide complicated by cyanide poisoning, gas gangrene (clostridial myonecrosis), crush injury, compartment syndrome and others acute traumatic ischemia, decompression sickness, healing of problem wounds, among them diabetic foot ulcer, exceptional blood loss (anemia), intracranial abscess, soft tissue necrotizing infection, refractory osteomyelitis, delayed radiation injury, compromised skin grafts and flaps and thermal burns. The hyperbaric medicine occupies its well-deserved place in the modern health sciences, as demonstrate more than 8,000 hyperbaric chambers in the world, dozens of professional associations of this specialty, the continuing fundamental and clinical research, new journal publications and books. And what is the most important multitude of patients healed with this therapy, not invasive and painless. We hope that this book will help many people to get familiar with new ways and possibilities of treatment and to consult about it with their physician. This book describes in a simple and accessible manner the main benefits of hyperbaric oxygen treatment. --Editorial Review
About the Author
Nina Subbotina. MD, Ph.D, specialist in hyperbaric medicine. Russian by origin. Nina Subbotina graduated as a Medical Doctor with Honours (First Moscow Medical Institute I.M.Sechenov, URSS) and obtained a degree of Candidate of Medical Sciences (Ph.D. equivalent). She has worked in Argentina for almost 20 years, including eight years at the hyperbaric medicine center of Sanatorio Modelo Qui