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Brian Downs hosts a media preview of the chambers, showing how a patient will rest while undergoing treatment.

Henry Mayo’s Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Chambers Ready To Treat Chronic Wounds

Patients with severe chronic injuries in the Santa Clarita Valley will soon be using oxygen to heal their wounds at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.


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The hospital’s Wound Care Clinic recently purchased a pair of hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers, which place patients in a sealed chamber filled with pure oxygen.

In the chamber, oxygen, which is needed by cells to repair damaged tissue, can reach areas of the body through the bloodstream that would otherwise be blocked off by the chronic injury, allowing the body to heal more effectively.

“We don’t deal with stitching people up or anything that’s fairly minor,” said Brian Downs, the clinical director of the facility. “It’s patients that are chronically ill, have multiple (issues) like diabetes, vascular issues.”

Officials are expecting a majority of the patients to have diabetic ulcerations, infections of the bone and radiation-related injuries.

“This is one of the top-line ways to treat chronic wounds,” said Downs. “Sometimes they’ll ulcerate, and those wounds don’t heal well. This treatment may improve their treatment and healing outcomes.”

These are the only machines of their kind in the Santa Clarita Valley. Officials said residents before now would have to travel for at least half an hour for each of their 30 individual 90-minute sessions in the chamber.

“The only other hyperbaric chambers are in Palmdale, at UCLA, in Camarillo and up north in Bakersfield,” said Downs. “This is really a unique treatment that we can present to our community they can’t get at any other facility in a reasonable distance.”

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Each of the two machines costs about $100,000, along with the expenses of completely redesigning the facility and surrounding lot to accommodate the need for an oxygen storage facility and pipes for the highly flammable gas to travel through the building safely.  

“It took a year plus in planning,” said Donna Ferguson, the director of outpatient services for the hospital, “and highly specialized architects that know how to build, how to structure an oxygen-rich environment like this.”

The potential danger is great enough that the hospital must take special precautions with the room the chambers are in, from cleaning procedures to patient use.

“Everything has to be cleaned with absolutely no alcohol, the patients have to undress (and put on completely cotton clothing),” Ferguson said. “There are posters that say what they can and can’t take into the room. They can’t even take a book into the chamber.”

However, Ferguson said the benefits far outweigh the cost of buying and maintaining the highly specialized equipment.

“Those patients, if not for hyperbaric (treatment), many of them will end up with an amputation,” she said. “Many of them are diabetic, many of them have leg, foot wounds that are not healing under conservative measures.”

The hospital is still waiting on final approval from the state to officially open the chambers to patients, but both are expected to be operational by mid August


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Henry Mayo’s Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Chambers Ready To Treat Chronic Wounds

One comment

  1. “The only other hyperbaric chambers are in Palmdale, at UCLA, in Camarillo and up north in Bakersfield,” said Downs. “This is really a unique treatment that we can present to our community they can’t get at any other facility in a reasonable distance.”….
    NOT TRUE….there’s one at the Amputation Prevention Center/Wound Care Center at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys…a well- established one at that, since 2009.

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About Chris McCrory

Chris McCrory is the acting News Director for KHTS Radio. He set up a profile picture in his first week as an intern in 2015, and still isn't sure how to change it. He will graduate from Arizona State University with a BA in Journalism in December 2018.