More than six million people in the United States suffer from chronic wounds – skin disruptions that do not show significant improvement within four weeks, or heal completely within eight weeks.

Chronic wounds typically fall into one of the following categories:

• Diabetic ulcers
• Venous stasis ulcers
• Delayed radiation injury
• Pressure ulcers (commonly known as bedsores)
• Ischemic Ulcers
• Ulcers on ischemic limbs
• Other chronic, hard-to-heal wounds

The treatment of chronic wounds poses a significant challenge for medical professionals. To meet this challenge in Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino Counties, Healdsburg District Hospital (HDH) has developed Northern California Wound Care, a comprehensive multidisciplinary team focused solely on the treatment of chronic, non-healing wounds. As an essential part of this initiative, HDH now offers hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), using two state-of-the-art chambers. Of the patients treated at Northern California Wound Care, about 15% will require HBOT.

A history of HBOT

Hyperbaric or high-pressure therapy without oxygen dates back to 1662, when it was used unsuccessfully to treat rickets, scurvy, and arthritis. A century after the discovery of oxygen in 1775, it was combined with pressure to study its effects on experimental animals. Oxygen toxicity became readily apparent as seizures and pulmonary damage occurred.

Beginning in 1937, hyperbaric oxygen was used to treat divers who spent too much time underwater and surfaced too rapidly. A 1966 coal mine disaster in Japan ushered in the wound-healing era of HBOT. Miners with thermal burns and carbon monoxide poisoning were treated in an HBOT chamber, and their skin healed significantly better than those treated conventionally.

Through the 1960s, HBOT was applied to a multitude of unrelated chronic ailments. The lack of proven efficacy of HBOT for these conditions resulted in a backlash of skepticism against this treatment modality.

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