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Show Family Weekly September 28, 1969 Hyperbaric Medicine: oxygen poisoning, gas gangrene, High-pressu- re rr." , P :jf ' - III, W.. "ww.nin.aiiin .0 - gift' y Vv yh , c It's equivalent to the patient being submerged under 66 feet of water while breathing oxygen. (That's why it's sometimes called "taking a dive.") At this pressure, oxygen dissolves more easily into the fluid part of the blood, much like carbon dioxide dissolves in water to make ordinary soda. Before taking a dive, each patient is thoroughly examined. If found to be a proper candidate for HBO, he d chamber. is taken into the Steel doors clang shut. As the pressure is increased to the oxygen level prescribed, he breathes the pure oxygen through a mask like an astronaut or scuba diver; the difference is that he is in an air environment. The average treatment lasts about an hour and a half. Many patients are relaxed enough to read. The basic concept goes back 2,200 years. But about 25 years ago, a U.S. Navy medical officer began studying oxygen inhalation in divers and submariners doing "dry dives" in a compression chamber to establish the human tolerance limits of p- u- oxygen. The new era of hyperbaric medicine, however, started in 1955 when a Dutch doctor proved that oxygen could cure gas gangrene without the need to amputate a limb. In Boston, Dr. William F. Bern-har- d of Children's Hospital Medical Center, pioneered in using the technique to treat babies born with severe oxygen hunger due to heart defects. By dousing the blood plasma of these infants with oxygen, he was able to clamp off the vessels leading to the heart safely enough to correct the defects surgically. Today the Duke University Medical Center, New York's Mt. Sinai, and St. James Hospital in Chicago Heights, 111., are among those that use hyperbaric chambers. Thus far, the chambers are functioning chiefly for research. Some medical centers in Japan, England, Australia, and South Africa also have one or more. St. Barnabas, which proudly refers to itself as "The Hospital of Tomorrow Today," now boasts that it has the world's largest and most complete hyperbaric clinical and research setup. Unlike most other medical centers involved in this field, St. Barnabas freely accepts patients for HBO. 100-perce- nt room-size- rl" Jbij" -- Ji high-pressu- LMMJUMMriM gtfiiiwntliSlfttti:,aB,a,.ih tiu.lfiMMHMW Mrs. Geneva Pugh (second from left) of Coatesville, Pa., in master hyperbaric chamber at St. Barnabas Medical Center. When A jetliner crashed a motel near New Orleans International Airport recently, one of the guests, Stefan Bogen of Holradel, N.J., suffered severe burns. After emergency treatment locally, he was flown to St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J. There, Bogen was placed daily in a tank under oxygen while receiving conventional burn treatment. The oxygen, in what is known as a hyperbaric chamber, made healing easier, minimized infection, and allowed skin grafts to take more readily. A few weeks later, Bogen was back at work. Last November, after the rigorous Presidential campaign, Sen. Everett Dirksen found himself gasping for high-pressu- re 100-perce- nt 4 Family Weekly, September S3, 1969 breath from a lung condition. At St. Barnabas, he received treatment in a oxygen chamber for a week. When he was discharged from the hospital, the Senator talked without pausing for a deep breath. "I feel in condition," he remarked optimistically. Early one morning, Mrs. Rena Gold of West Orange, N.J., was overcome by carbon monoxide fumes from a car left running all night in the garage below her apartment. At St. Barnabas, tests showed her blood was 47 percent saturated with the poisonous gas ; 60 percent would be fatal. Mrs. Gold was given immediate hyperbaric treatment through an opening made in her trachea. This was continued until tests showed normal brain waves. Then Mrs. Gold was able to high-pressu- re top-flig- ht go home. Many people in a wide variety of critical conditions are being helped, and often saved, by having their sys oxtems drenched with almost-pur- e tank or ygen in a chamber. It is technically called hyperbaric oxygenation (HBO). To understand HBO, consider the fact that we can't function without oxygen. Our body js like a sponge soaked witL it. But that sponge tends to dry out when there's an injury, disease, faulty heart, or poorly functioning lungs. A great lack of oxygen is just about a death sentence. The pressure tank is used when the conventional methods of giving oxygen prove inadequate. How do pressures influence the oxygen we take in? At sea level, we enjoy one "atmosphere," equal to about 15 pounds of oxygen per square inch. In a hyperbaric tank, the patient is generally exposed to three atmospheres or 45 pounds of oxygen pressure. At this level, body tissues are saturated with up to 20 times the normal amount of oxygen. high-pressu- well-kno- re re |