GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Many medical treatments are not pleasant at all. That’s not the case here. Patients getting hyperbaric chamber therapy just have to sit in a comfortable chair and breathe oxygen.
“When you finish treatment, you have the opportunity to ring the bell,” said Kevin Bowling.
He had to come here every day for eight weeks because of radiation side effects, saying, “I had neuropathy, bad case of tinnitus, and a lot of pretty severe headaches and loss of taste and smell and a variety of things.”
Kevin said after his first day of using this chamber, he saw improvement, and now that he is finished with the therapy, he feels 100 percent better.
“As a result of going through the treatment, the very severe headaches that I was having on a daily basis have reduced dramatically,” said Kevin.
The chamber is the only multiple-person chamber like this in West Michigan. It can seat 12 patients at once, and seats can be removed to fit stretchers.
“We're also the only emergent chamber in the entire state. So, we will get emergency cases like carbon monoxide poisonings,” said Dr. Drue Orwig, section chief for Wound and Hyperbaric at Corewell Health. She says besides treating carbon monoxide poisoning and radiation side effects there are 12 other issues that can be treated.
“When you're under pressure, you get a lot higher levels of oxygen than you can get in a regular room. What that does in the body is helps to stimulate new blood vessel growth in certain areas that are maybe at risk,“ said Dr. Orwig.
She says when in use, the pressure inside the chamber is equivalent of being under 45 feet of water. She says, “For day-to-day treatments, this is kind of the sweet spot. They have some studies that this pressure helps to recruit more of those stem cells, and I was talking about compared to lower pressures.”
Kevin is just glad that West Michigan has this type of treatment available, because for him it was a lifesaver. Kevin said, “Until you've been through radiation and chemo, it's hard to describe how much of an impact it can have on your quality of life, and part of what hyperbaric oxygen does is improve that quality of life.”
If you think you have a condition that could benefit from this therapy, Dr. Orwig says you should see your primary care doctor to get a referral.
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