Some more GOOD NEWS! Every time I get on the internet and often more and more in periodicals and journals there are new articles about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Some are testimonials and many are documentations and reports of main stream medicine finally waking up to this safe supportive, often life and/or tissue saving modality.
As many of you know, with no ability to patent a therapy, drug companies have no interest in it. Since most money for research is for patentable products, guess what? It become an orphan treatment. So, it has taken many years for hbo to get this far into the healing arts. Medical schools do not teach it and if they mention chambers at all, it may only be about divers and other folks susceptible to the bends. Doctors who want to get into it, can and do take special courses and training but only after they have read something and persued the subject (as I did) or knew someone who was involved.
I just read a very good article in “Alternative Medicine” (Feb. 2006) by Kathy Summers. Apparently Ms. Summers had stopped into our office but, as I understand it, her Blue Cross-Blue Shield would pay the hospital but not a free-standing facility. She did go to a hospital in Scottdale, Arizona and really got great results. You might look it up and read her article.
The fact that the insurance company erroneously pays $1000.00 to $2000.00 an hour for the exact same treatment as free-standing centers who usually charge $150. to $250. an hour (we are $150.) shows how stuck they are in misinformation. We are often less then the patients 80/20 co-payment.
Yes, we are still on the forefront of what should be available to every patient at affordable fees but not near as the pioneers that have been yelling in the wind for over 30 years.
If the patient has a condition that was caused by or causes a hypoxic condition, the chances are very good that they will benefit from high dose (under pressure) breathing oxygen. The gas laws and physiology take care of the problem to whatever degree it is possible.