MaineHealth offers state-of-the-art hyperbaric oxygen therapy to help patients with hard-to-heal wounds and infections get better more quickly. Patients with diabetic wounds or radiation ulcers often heal faster with hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
What is hyperbaric oxygen therapy?
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy often speeds the wound healing process. With hyperbaric oxygen therapy, patients breathe in pure oxygen in a special room called a hyperbaric chamber. Or, patients may breathe in oxygen through a tube.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy allows your blood to carry more oxygen to your body parts. More oxygen may allow wounds to heal better and faster.
Who should have hyperbaric oxygen therapy?
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy may be used for patients with a wound that is not healing. It often is used for someone with poor circulation or diabetes.
What else does hyperbaric oxygen therapy treat?
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy can be used to treat many medical conditions:
- Skin or bone infections
- Non-healing, slow-healing and hard-to-heal wounds
- Burns
- Carbon monoxide poisoning
- Radiation injury, also called radiation ulcers, from cancer treatment
- Infections in the brain or sinuses
- Decompression sickness from a scuba diving injury