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• 02 / 07 / 2009

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According to Dr. Alfredo Silva Amargó, chief for the Hyperbaric Medicine Department and Underwater Activities, despite the capacity of the chamber, the service will be started with only four patients.  

The hyperbaric oxygen therapy -currently available in six Cuban hospitals- is a therapeutic procedure by which the patient gets high partial pressures of oxygen when breathing pure oxygen inside the chamber at a pressure above the atmospheric one.

Many disorders can be treated with the hyperbaric oxygen therapy like ulcers, delayed cicatrices, spinal cord diseases, osteomielitis and herpes zoster. On the other hand, disorders like immersion asphyxia, chronic arterial insufficiency, intoxications and retine arthery thrombosis –among others- can also be treated the same way.

Although this kind of therapeutic treatment was scientifically proven less than 50 years ago, it has been actually applied for more than 300 years. Nowadays it’s very popular in Russia and in the United States, while in Europe it’s basically applied in Italy, France and Germany.

According to information from the Cuban Society of Hyperbaric Medicine and Underwater Activities, most of the Latin American physicians who use this kind of treatment were trained in Cuba or by Cuban professionals in their own countries.

(Escambray.cu)