The Daily Mail - Perched on a wooden bench inside a metal tank, surrounded by people shrouded in full-face hoods with oxygen pipes, Michael Charter could have been forgiven for thinking he had stepped on to the set of a sci-fi film.
In fact, the former publisher and businessman was in a decompression chamber receiving huge bursts of oxygen in an atmosphere twice the normal pressure - equivalent to being 40ft under the sea.
The aim of the treatment, known as hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO), was to heal the internal damage caused to his bladder and bowel when he received radiotherapy for prostate cancer 17 years earlier.
'When my urologist suggested the therapy, I thought he was mad,' laughs Michael, 70, who lives in Devon. 'I'd never heard of it. But, as most people with significant and long- term radiotherapy damage will tell you, you will try anything to ease your symptoms.'
While radiotherapy is an effective cancer treatment - experts say it increases survival rates by about 50 per cent - it can damage healthy tissue around the tumour site.
Most vulnerable are the 12,000 patients a year who have pelvic irradiation for bowel, cervical and womb cancer, and those who are treated for head and neck cancers.
'We think that about 50 per cent of patients who undergo pelvic irradiation will suffer some radiotherapy damage,' says Dr Jason Lester, an oncologist at Velindre Cancer Centre, Cardiff.
'Some will simply suffer a change in bowel habits, but others may have distressing symptoms such as bowel ulcers, rectal bleeding, pelvic pain and a lack of bladder control. Some will need a blood transfusion, or even end up with a colostomy bag.'
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