How Hyperbaric Oxygen Can Help the Body Heal - Yale Medicine Explains
November 14, 2023Transcript
- 00:04Oxygen means life.
- 00:08It's true for every cell in our body, every organism in the world.
- 00:12You need oxygen for many processes
- 00:14that drive life and health of the cells.
- 00:18If you interrupt that flow, that tissue or cells to start dying.
- 00:22The body has an amazing ability to heal itself wherever there is injury.
- 00:27Oxygen has been shown to increase the working of many cells in the body,
- 00:32including cells that make new blood vessels, cells that make collagen
- 00:36and cells that regenerate bone.
- 00:38Hyperbaric oxygen means that it is 100% oxygen under pressure.
- 00:44There are certain conditions that are emergency conditions
- 00:48which are life and death that hyperbaric oxygen can treat.
- 00:51It can also treat
- 00:52some very significant infections in the body or when there is trauma,
- 00:56very commonly used for people with diabetic ulcers.
- 01:00It also is used to treat wounds and other injuries to tissues where there
- 01:04is scarring or death of tissue like from radiation.
- 01:07So it restores the continuity of tissues, it restores the circulation
- 01:12and it is basically a very good regenerative medicine tool.
- 01:25- Avascular necrosis is a condition
- 01:28where the blood supply to the bone has been injured or dies.
- 01:34If the blood vessels have been damaged, then the cells in the bone die
- 01:38and the then the bone unfortunately starts to collapse and fall apart.
- 01:43STEM cells are very beneficial to avascular necrosis
- 01:47because they can help repair the damaged blood supply
- 01:51and the dead bone.
- 01:53At Yale, we harvest the stem cells
- 01:56from the patient's bone marrow in their pelvis.
- 02:00So we take some of that bone marrow, and during the surgery we process it
- 02:05in a centrifuge and we're able to isolate and concentrate down the stem cells.
- 02:10- We now know that hyperbaric oxygen stimulates stem cells.
- 02:16- By combining the hyperbaric
- 02:18oxygen treatment with the surgery.
- 02:22We're giving the body the best chance to regrow those blood vessels.
- 02:26You can think of it as an extra boost or as an extra push.
- 02:31We're giving it just a little bit more of a chance to repair itself.
- 02:40- Each Treatment is two hours
- 02:42inside the chamber, five days a week.
- 02:45We do ten before the surgery and 20 after.
- 02:48So it takes about six weeks.
- 02:51The first thing is we do like a office consultation.
- 02:55We explain what hyperbaric is just like I'm doing now.
- 02:58We answered questions.
- 03:00We discussed risks and benefits.
- 03:02We reassure the patient that it is really a very safe treatment.
- 03:08- The program allows us to coordinate
- 03:11a complex set of treatments and therapies.
- 03:14We work with all the specialists,
- 03:16such as the pulmonologist, rheumatologist, hematologists,
- 03:21who treat a lot of these patients who have avascular necrosis.
- 03:26- Being a department which combines
- 03:28orthopedic and rehabilitation is is unique in and of itself,
- 03:33and the addition of stem cells is also very unique.
- 03:36And then the patient gets hyperbaric
- 03:38oxygen treatment, which is also part of our own department.
- 03:42If they need other things to make them function better.
- 03:46It's not just treating the joint.
- 03:47We have to treat the person.
- 03:49We really focus on the function and the whole patient.