KMBC - Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been used to treat patients recovering from carbon-monoxide poisoning, scuba-diving accidents and diabetic wounds.
Recovering cancer patients are getting hyperbaric oxygen therapy to help heal the effects of radiation therapy.
"It's not going to be the day after the day you finish. It's going to be six months, maybe five years. You may find you have a wound in your irradiated area and it's not healing properly," said Mary Brandon, a hyperbaric technologist. "Their cells become different when irradiated and oxygen can bring normalcy to that, can bring back a normal division of cells."
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy use for post-radiation patients is becoming more widely known and more routinely used.
KMBC's Kelly Eckerman reported that prostate cancer patients are the ones seen most often at Shawnee Mission Medical Center's Wound Care Center, and they report improvement after about 10 treatments.
"A patient whose had cancer, it's not so much the cancer that we're helping, it's the radiation. Generally, what we're doing is bringing oxygen to a place where there's not enough oxygen. Without enough oxygen being brought to your cells, you're not going to heal," said Brandon.
Click here to view article online.
