My husband had a fistula removed from his groin/buttocks area of his inner thigh a few months ago. The wound kept opening up. So the doctor said to leave it open and pack it. He did this for about a month and it got infected. He had a fever, chills, drainage and a foul odor from the wound and not to mention the wound was blackish grey inside. The docs told him to wait and it should be healing fine. WRONG!!!

Here we are four surgeries later with enough tissue and muscle removed from his butt the same as the size of a grapefruit. Well after is fourth surgery yesterday, the doctors still cant explain why it is not healing and they dont know how the bacteria got in there originally. He has been using a wound vac for a month now and it has just kept the wound from getting infected again. But the wound is still a white/pink color. Now the doctor wants him to do treatments in a hyperberic chamber...but of course we are waiting for prior approval from the insurance company (the story of my life and probaly yours).

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone had insight on his situation or did hyperberic chamber treatments.
Thanks for listening!

This may be too late for your posting date. I had 44 or 45 dives in a hyperbaric chamber for wound treatment and it worked well. It started the healing process go faster. I kind of enjoyed the daily dives too.

How did you get insurance to pay for HO?

I have Type II diabetes albeit minor. Any wounds on the feet qualified me for dives with Medicare. Check with your Dr. on what can get you covered.

Hi noles,
Did you see any other benefits from the hyperbaric eg sensation, movement, extra energy?

Yes. I felt energized and breathing (inhaling) was reduced... taking 1 breath for everyone else's 2-3 breaths. Healing was fast.

for overall health, hyperbaric treatment works well. however as soon as you stop it, your back to where you were....

and 44-45 dives in the chamber worked for you.... thats a lot of sessions, would've been over a long period of time though.... so you would've had healing anyway.... placebo treatment??? i dunno...

and also, i havent had many pressure sores before (only a few) but when i do i always go on broad spectrum anti-biotics as a precaution, cos the last thing you want is a blood infection.....

'AbZ' wrote: for overall health, hyperbaric treatment works well. however as soon as you stop it, your back to where you were....
What makes you write that? Healing of tissue takes place. How does that get to "back to where you were"?

and 44-45 dives in the chamber worked for you.... thats a lot of sessions, would've been over a long period of time though....
Yeah, that's a lot of time but it worked well. And yeah, that's a long period of time.... 44-45 days however not consecutive.

so you would've had healing anyway....
Not as quickly.

placebo treatment??? i dunno...
Yeah, you don't know is exactly right.

my son has been going for 2 and a half hours 5 days a week. Not pressure sore.... just to see what benefit he gets. Its early days yet , today was day 9, but he has got loads more energy. Even if thats all he gets, it means he gets more "value for money" out of his biokinetics which he does after hyperbaric.

My husband went for 30 treatments...we were so hopeful, but unfortunately did not see any results. We were able to get insurance to pay for it by saying it was for a "skin flap preservation". Blue Cross allows you to go for 20 treatments, but after 20, we just had the doctor write a prescription for 20 more and Blue Cross didn't catch it. We had to stop it short though because he needed to go onto rehab.