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A Physician's Guide to Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

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R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center

The University of Maryland Department of Hyperbaric Medicine is a part of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center.

History of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

The University of Maryland Departement of Hyperbaric Medicine is a part of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. Does your patient present at the emergency department with acute carbon monoxide poisoning? Or is your patient suffering for long-term osteomyelitis? Today you can intervene in these and other conditions such as radiation tissue damage, compromised skin grafts and soft tissue infections with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, an innovation 300 years old.

Although we know that the use of air under pressure -- hyperbaric air -- was first considered for treatment of respiratory diseases in 1662, more than a century passed until its first medicinal use was reported in 1794.

International research flourished as both universities and the navy intensively studied the efficacy of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in safely decompressing deep sea divers. In addition, researchers sought to determine its success in treating decompression sickness and arterial gas embolism. And by the 1940's, the standard treatment tables of the United States Navy featured hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

More than a dozen years went by before the National Academy of Science and the National Research Council appointed a committee to prepare a critical review of the physiological basis of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. In 1963 the committee published Hyperbaric Oxygenation: Potentialities and Problems. This study detailed the limitations, the safeguards and the hazards, as well as the physical equipment and the personnel required to begin a coordinated experimental and clinical program.

The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society established its own committee in 1976. The committee focused on basic research and clinical data to determine the medical conditions for which hyperbaric oxygen therapy would be appropriate. A year later the committee's report was published and today serves as a guide both third-party underwriters and to medical professionals working with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. As a result 12 medical conditions have been officially approved for treatment.

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For more information or to make a referral, call the Hyperbaric Chamber at 410-328-6152 between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. During other times, please call ExpressCare, our physical referral and transport service, at 1-800-373-4111.

This page was last updated on: June 19, 2007.