Hyperbaric Wound Care Movement Hits Close To Home

Word of the newly expanded Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine at Oakwood Heritage Hospital (Taylor MI) caught this hometown boy's blogging eye. The $1.5 million investment, featuring a conversion from multiplace to monoplace chambers, seems especially prudent for a healthcare facility serving this hardworking and rapidly aging downriver Detroit community. More to the point, the hospital sits on the ruins of your faithful correspondent's old Little League field, wedged between his alma mater, the abandoned and soon-to-be-razed Taylor Center High School (Go Rams!); his childhood parish, the St Alfred Catholic Church; a funeral home; and the UAW regional headquarters. Rest assured we'll soon be adding the clinic to our Michigan treatment center directory. And of course we've already scored an invitation to tour the facility next time we're in town. (People in this business are so friendly.) Our best wishes till then for a successful and healthful practice.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Gingrich Slips HBOT Into The Obamacare News Cycle

Newt Gingrich spent most of his time slamming healthcare reform legislation and the State of the Union address, but he and South Florida television viewers also learned a thing or two about HBOT during his tour of the Hyperbaric Medicine and Wound Care Program at Bethesda Memorial Hospital (Boynton Beach FL) today.

Visiting a cancer survivor undergoing HBOT for radiation injury, the former Speaker of the House praised the hospital's clinical innovation as well as its business savvy in partnering with National Healing to establish the program 15 years ago:

[Hyperbaric oxygen therapy] is rapidly becoming the standard of care to avoid amputations and improve quality of life. Centralized bureaucracies cannot get us into the future as quickly as local partnerships can.

Click the arrow to watch the video below. Read more about Gingrich's visit in the Palm Beach Post.



O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Florida Clinic Reopens Nearly Two Years After Fatal Fire

The first fatal hyperbaric chamber fire in the US, on 1 May 2009 at the Ocean Hyperbaric Neurologic Center in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea FL, sent shock waves across the HBOT community. (Click here to read our previous coverage of the accident and its aftermath.) The clinic reopened earlier this week, as Neubauer Hyperbaric Neurologic Center, under a lingering cloud of controversy.

Besides reteaching everyone some vital lessons in equipment safety and safe clinical staff and patient procedures, the Florida fire put HBOT providers and healthcare consumers on notice regarding the legal and truthful promotion of off-label indications for hyperbaric medicine on the web. Money quote from Monday's South Florida Sun-Sentinel article:

The US Food and Drug Administration doesn't interfere with how doctors use the devices. But the agency does act when a clinic starts promoting devices for unlisted conditions, violating federal law, according to Erica V. Jefferson, an agency spokeswoman.

Still, the clinic's website makes some rather bold claims about the treatment of "unlisted conditions," and the Sun-Sentinel piece includes the following video testimonial by a man who enjoys success with HBOT for multiple sclerosis.



Here on HyperbaricLink we insist that any and all information about off-label indications should be presented in proper context, clearly showing the current FDA status, the weight of published clinical evidence, our own views and insights, and links to other helpful and authoritative resources. Poke around our Hyperbaric Treatment Center Directory and you'll see what we mean.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

ETC Names Steve Wood President

We are pleased to learn that Environmental Tectonics Corporation (ETC) has appointed Steve Wood as president of its Biomedical Division, responsible for directing development and sales of the BaraMed line of hyperbaric chambers. ETC Biomedical is the world's largest manufacturer of computerized monoplace hyperbaric chambers featuring the OSCAR data management system. Steve brings long experience to the job, and we've long admired his in-depth knowledge and unyielding dedication to improving chamber safety.

Congratulations and best wishes, Mr Wood.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Ken Locklear: A Great Loss For Hyperbaric Medicine

We mark with sorrow and surprise the death of Ken Locklear, at 41, after a long battle with cancer. A leading voice and guiding force in evidence-based hyperbaric medicine, Ken always found time to speak with and encourage us, find common ground, and explore opportunities to collaborate. We so wish we could have met him in person, as several times we had arranged and rearranged. Now our thoughts are with Ken's young family. And to his colleagues at Best Publishing, the American Baromedical Association, and Wound Care & Hyperbaric Medicine magazine, we urge you to continue the man's important work with the same zeal and singularity of purpose.

Read the moving tributes by Roque Wicker and Dr Paul Harch at the Hyperbaric Tech Blog.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Welcome Passavant Area Hospital

We welcome Passavant Area Hospital to our directory of Illinois hyperbaric treatment centers. Forty-five minutes west of Springfield in Jacksonville, the Advanced Healing Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine Center at Passavant Area Hospital treats the following conditions in a multiplace HyperTec chamber:

• Air or Gas Embolism
• Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
• Chronic Wounds
• Crush Injury and Traumatic Ischemias
• Decompression Sickness
• Gas Gangrene
• Necrotizing Infections
• Osteomyelitis
• Radionnecrosis
• Skin Grafts and Flaps

The Advanced Healing Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine Center at Passavant Area Hospital is affiliated with Accelecare, a national medical management company specializing in advanced wound care.

What Does Money Have To Do With It?

While we're on the subject of research and the healthy skepticism with which a single study should usually be regarded, we wanted to make mention of a good book from last fall's reading list. White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine takes a hard look at the corrupting influence of corporate money on medical research. To us, the disparity in research funding between pharmaceuticals and hyperbaric medicine is striking. We can't help but observe that the pace of adoption of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in new areas of medicine may be related to the fact that hyperbaric chamber manufacturers and HBOT providers have nowhere near the financial resources of drug companies.

Maybe that's a good thing in the long term. If research into new uses for hyperbaric oxygen therapy isn't driven by manufacturer dollars study results may be more enduring. As a therapy with multiple applications, perhaps new HBOT research will serve as a guiding example for uncoupling research underwriting from its financial beneficiaries. In the meantime, we'll regard research with the potential to be hugely beneficial to a specific organization with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Problems with the system may make us advocates for improvement, but we're not motivated to question the essential value of peer reviewed scientific research. Science may be fallible, but it's a lot less fallible than non-science.

Autism Study Invalidated: No Link to Vaccines

Many news sources have picked up the report by Brian Deer in BMJ.com, the online arm of the British Medical Journal, that the 1988 study linking autism and the measels, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine contained numerous instances of altered clinical data. Highlights from the report include:

• Three of nine children reported with regressive autism did not have autism diagnosed at all. Only one child clearly had regressive autism.

• Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were “previously normal,” five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns.

• Some children were reported to have experienced first behavioral symptoms within days of MMR, but the records documented these as starting some months after vaccination.

Numerous other subsequent studies have shown no link between the vaccine and autism spectrum disorders, and the original paper was withdrawn by the Lancet. Unfortunately, in the time since the publication of the bogus study the scare it started has caused needless illnesses and deaths and a resurgence of the diseases the vaccine prevents.

This latest development underscores the vital importance of well designed clinical studies of any diagnosis--or treatment. Although a number of studies have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in treating patients with autism, there is currently not a sufficient body of evidence to conclude scientifically that HBOT is effective.