Hospital unveils hyperbaric chamber

How can you treat a wound that won't heal, or a severe case of gangrene, or a case of the bends?

Breathe normally.

That's all a hyperbaric patient has to do: Recline in a chair for several hours a day, in a chamber with atmospheric pressure equivalent to being 45 feet underwater, breathing 100 percent oxygen.

Commonly thought of as a venue for divers with the bends, hyperbaric chambers have become increasingly useful for treating more than a dozen ailments, including helping cancer patients heal from radiation therapy.

Now Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle is opening one of the largest such chambers in the country, and one of the first built especially to treat patients.

The $6 million facility celebrates a grand opening today but won't be open to patients until June 24. The chamber is 46 feet long and about as wide as a Boeing 737. But it looks more like a small submarine with portholes and an airlock. Inside, individual chambers can hold as many as eight patients each.

Hyperbaric treatment means raising blood-oxygen to 15 times normal. The extra oxygen is carried to tissues to help them heal.

Dorothy Bullitt, a donor to the new facility, credits hyperbaric medicine for saving her right leg.

Bullitt, 49, executive director of the local Habitat for Humanity, broke her right leg after slipping on ice in early 2001.

Complications developed, and infection set in. But after a series of hyperbaric treatments, she recovered. Bullitt said she enjoyed her experience in the chamber, watching fellow patients help each other and pass the time with games or just chatting.

"There's something so charming about being with other people — young and old, successful and not successful, men and women — who are all leveled by the plain clothing, no make up, and their sickness," she said. "Everyone is reduced to their humanity."

Victor Gonzales: 206-464-2393 or vgonzales@seattletimes.com