In 2011, Chris Francis, of Newport, Australia, underwent radiotherapy after having a small skin cancer removed from her shin. Not only did the treatment destroy the cancer cells, but also the surrounding tissue. According to Chris, ‘I had a great big hole in my leg. Just to stand up and clean my teeth and go back to bed was agony.’ Eventually, she was referred to a therapy that would improve her wellbeing forever.
In January, Chris went to Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital’s hyperbaric unit. It took six weeks of daily therapy and regular wound care until her ulcer was ‘looking really good’, and now it has all but disappeared. The main health concern that people believe hyperbaric oxygen therapy is used for is “the bends” or decompression sickness in divers. However, most of the patients undergoing hyperbaric therapy at hospital-based hyperbaric units across Australia are similar to Chris; with half of the patients at PoW being treated for damage to bone or soft tissue incurred during radiation therapy. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is also used to improve the wellness of those with necrotising infections, carbon monoxide poisoning and Crohn’s disease.
While in normal air under water is 21% oxygen, for the treatment you sit or lie in a sealed chamber and breathe 100% oxygen at depths equivalent to 10-20 metres. Your lungs are saturated with oxygen while the increased atmospheric pressure drives the gas into your body’s tissues much more quickly than under normal atmospheric conditions. Therefore, your tissues can get the blood and oxygen it needs to heal to begin the healing process.
Associate professor Mike Bennett, a doctor at the PoW unit and president of the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society, explains that for some people with cancers in the pelvic area, for example, and have suffered tissue damage during their treatment, ‘their problem is just unremitting and the only solution until recently [has been] very major, radical surgery – removing the bowel, removing the bladder, having all sorts of bags and tubes permanently attached to your tummy.’
‘Hyperbaric has turned around some of these people’s lives,’ he notes. ‘It allows the tissue to repair itself, so the bowel or the bladder or whatever’s damaged, over a period of weeks to months, slowly repairs itself and normal function, or close to normal function, is restored.’ Chris enthuses, ‘Just to be able to walk outside and hang the washing on the line, do housework – I never thought I’d enjoy that, but I’m just enjoying all that. Being free.’