See The Little Pufferbellies All In A Row

Last month we got our first closeup look at some inflatable/portable chambers cheerfully hissing away near our stand at the HBOT2010 7th International Symposium. There we met the most wonderful folks—patients, clinicians, and businesspeople—whose zeal impressed but whose words and ideas left us with troubling questions about the validity—science, equipment, and promotion—of mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy today.

Still we're confident there's a place in the world for mHBOT. It lies somewhere between this week's hatchet job in the Canadian Press and this local TV puff piece:



We're apt to agree when "MDs want rules for private hyperbaric clinics promoting unproven treatments." In fact there are rules Health Canada and the US Food and Drug Administration can and do enforce from time to time. But that's a totally unfair matchup of interviewees in the Canadian Press article.

We're apt to support good people offering sick children and families hope and no-cost access to therapy. But their claims are as wild as their HBOT is mild. And that's full media complicity in violative promotions by My Fox Tampa Bay.

HyperbaricLink prefers a shakeup to a crackdown. More information for healthcare consumers and referring physicians. More facility accreditation and professional credentialing. More clinical investigations and evidence-based practice. More light and less heat in our struggle to advance hyperbaric medicine, even HBOT of the mild persuasion, between consenting adults, and preferably under a doctor's supervision in a safety-inspected clinical setting that can handle any possible side-effects or medical emergencies.