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Oxygen Chamber Helps Wounds Heal

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 February 2007, 06:00 CST

By Jean P. Fisher

It's like being in a torpedo tube and you're the torpedo.

That's how Lori Elliott, 45, describes her 90-minute stints inside the gleaming oxygen chambers at Rex Hospital's new wound healing center. Sealed tightly in a plexiglass cylinder about the size of a prone telephone booth, the breast cancer survivor breathes in 100 percent pressurized oxygen. She says two weeks of daily sessions have noticeably sped healing from the surgery she had in late November to remove and reconstruct her right breast.

Treating wounds with pressurized oxygen, a process known as hyperbaric therapy, is hardly new. For years, physicians have prescribed it to patients with hard-to-heal sores, such as diabetics with angry foot and leg ulcers, and people with burns, skin infections and surgical wounds. During treatment, the body absorbs higher levels of oxygen, which helps wounds to heal.

But until January, when Rex opened Wake County's first hyperbaric oxygen therapy program, local patients had to leave the county for treatment. The Duke University Health System, which has a large hyperbaric program at Duke Hospital in Durham, plans in April to add oxygen chambers to its wound-healing center at Duke Raleigh Hospital.

Elliott, who lives in Cary, had never heard of hyperbaric therapy when her surgeon, Dr. Keelee MacPhee, referred her to Rex. She wasn't crazy about the idea of being sealed, coffinlike, in a chamber. And Elliott was initially perplexed by some of the requirements.

To avoid dangerous reactions with the pure oxygen, patients can't wear jewelry, contact lenses, perfume or makeup. That wasn't going to be fun, Elliott thought, since she'd be coming to her appointments from work. But her wounds kept reopening, even after MacPhee restitched her, and she had developed an infection. So she was determined to try it.

"When they first shut me up in there, it was a little scary," she said. But the chamber is see-though, "so you almost start to feel like there's nothing there. It's actually a lot roomier than I thought."

It's not so bad, either, Elliott has learned, to be forced to stay put for 90 minutes. The oxygen chamber is virtually sound-proof -- medical staff use a special phone to communicate with patients after the door is sealed -- so it's easy to shut out the rest of the world. Often, there is another patient in the chamber beside Elliott, but it's impossible for them to talk to each other. One man who was in the chamber beside Elliott slept during his treatments.

Elliott, a mother of two, uses her time to catch up on television or watch movies. Recently, she has gotten into the television medical drama "House," which one of the staff members owns on DVD.

"There's just enough time to get through two episodes," Elliott said. "It's relaxing. You can't go anywhere. You can't do anything. You can watch a show without anybody bothering you."

She can think of only one downside: Once you get in that oxygen chamber and treatment begins, there's no getting out until your time is up.

"You just have to make sure you go to the bathroom before you get in," Elliott said.

Staff writer Jean P. Fisher can be reached at 829-4753 or jfisher@newsobserver.com.

Source: The News & Observer

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