Hypoxia and Bends in F-22 Raptor Pilots: USAF and Congressional Inquiry Update

In the wake of new incidents of pilot hypoxia and bends in the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet, CNN senior national security producer Mike Mount has filed an excellent report this week on the status of ongoing investigations. Choice quotation:

Last month, the two members of Congress released numbers by the Air Force that showed pilots flying the F-22 Raptor reported illness from oxygen deprivation incidents 10 times as often as pilots of other fighter jets. The data showed Raptor pilots have reported 26.43 hypoxia and hypoxia-like incidents per 100,000 flight hours. While that represents a mere fraction of total flight hours, it is far higher than incidents from other Air Force aircraft, including the A-10, the F-15E and the F-16.

See our May 7 post for the CBS 60 Minutes video that fueled this story. Today the US Air Force keeps 187 Raptors flying from bases in California, Alaska, Virginia, New Mexico, Florida, Nevada, and Hawaii, where the most recent problems occurred.

[Drawing: A.S. Paper Aircraft Lab]

One Last Post Re: Success with Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Necrotizing Infections

Before we take a break from this topic, here's one more quick but inspiring story about success with hyperbaric oxygen therapy for deadly soft tissue infections, or flesh-eating disease, sometimes including gas gangrene or bone infections.

Nurse manager Amy Pakes, RN, MS, says Nassau University Medical Center, a NuHealth hospital in East Meadow, New York, sees a dozen cases of necrotizing fasciitis every year:

At Nassau, as soon as a diagnosis is made, the patient receives powerful intravenous antibiotics. Surgical debridement of the infected tissue immediately follows. In addition, hyperbaric oxygen therapy is given to prevent further tissue loss and promote healing.

"We usually take patients right from surgery to the hyperbaric chamber, but they might have to go back for several more surgeries to remove dead tissues and such," Pakes said.

Monday's story on Nurses.com tells the story of one recent case:

"We used all of our resources—our surgical team, hyperbaric team and skilled nursing in the burn center, who did the complicated wound dressings that accompanied the wound care," Pakes said. "The patient was here for almost a month and we were able to save his arm, but it was a team effort."

Eileen Abruzzo, RN, MSN, CIC, director of infection prevention at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York, was also interviewed for the Nurses.com report.

[Photo: NuHealth website]

HBOT for Necrotizing Fasciitis: South Carolina Mother of Twins Going Home with All Her Limbs

Lana Kuykendall, this year's "other" high-profile victim of necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating disease, underwent extensive hyperbaric oxygen therapy as part of her remarkable recovery at Greenville Memorial Hospital in Greenville, South Carolina. She also suffered with sepsis and endured more than 20 surgical procedures. Now the mother of twins born in May is heading home with all her limbs. This morning the Kuykendalls got the Today Show treatment, too. Click PLAY to watch the video below. Another heartwarming story with a cool HBOT twist.

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The Twitter Files: Hyperbaric Chamber Photo from the Penn Medicine Archives

In our daily search for hyperbaric news we enjoyed this 1968 photo from hyperbaric medicine at Penn (University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia):

Hyperbaric chamber construction at the John Morgan Building in June, 1968 [pic]. Program info: pennmedicine.org/hyperbaric/ twitter.com/PennArchives/s…
— Penn Archives (@PennArchives) June 25, 2012

Like so many others, Penn Medicine's HyperbaricLink profile could use some work. Twitter is one of the ways we find new and better information about hyperbaric treatment centers on the web.

Hyperbaric Chamber Manufacturers: Meet PBUCH

Thank you, Internet, for bringing a new containerized hyperbaric rescue system to our attention. Add PBUCH S.A., out of Poland, to HyperbaricLink's list of other manufacturers of hyperbaric chambers. PBUCH is short for Przedsiebiorstwo Budowy Urzadzen Chlodniczych, or "Company Plant Engineering," as near as we can tell. Designed to treat decompression sickness (DCS) and for training of submarine crews and undersea divers, the two-compartment system accommodates 10 in treatment and 4 in transfer. We post the video here as a reminder that hyperbaric oxygen therapy has strong roots and many routine uses in military and industrial diving and aviation today. And who doesn't enjoy a product demo so nicely done?



[Video: PBUCH, S.A.]

Necrotizing Fasciitis Postcript: Aimee Copeland in Rehab, Set to Return Home Next Month

The young woman we wrote about in May has won her life-or-death battle against necrotizing fasciitis or flesh-eating disease. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy played some role—we don't know the details—in Aimee Copeland's recovery from a rare and serious bacterial infection. In June her family released a photo of her enjoying some outdoor time and preparing for rehabilitation. Yesterday they announced she will return home sometime in August. Pretty moving stuff after such a  trying ordeal. Cheers to the Copelands and congratulations to the entire staff at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, Georgia.

[Photo: CNN]

Alzheimer's News: Researchers Discover Protective Mutation That Slows Beta Amyloid Buildup

Gina Kolata in the New York Times serves up a fine explanation of an important new Alzheimer's study. The study was published today in Nature [doi:10.1038/nature11283] and conducted by a predominantly Scandinavian group representing Genentech and deCODE genetics, based in Reykjavik, Iceland. The research confirms that the buildup of beta amyloid drives the disease and identifies a rare gene mutation that slows its production and buildup. Finding the genetic key to protecting the brain against protein plaques and tangles may be a real breakthrough in the development of new drugs.

Alzheimer's disease is the seventh leading cause of death in the US, killing nearly 75,000 a year and afflicting 5.3 million.

Recently we updated our Alzheimer's page and found no evidence to support the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

[Image: Nature]

Sea Turtle Returns to Sea After Successful HBOT for Osteomyelitis

This just in from Florida. How can we not report it? What else but HBOT works for osteomyelitis (bone infection)? How can you not watch? Go, Kahuna, go!