After landing in Nashville, Tenn., for a weekend adventure, Vanessa Lopez attributed the slight pain in her right ear to the pressurized environment of an airplane.

Her hearing was fine, though, and the pain eventually went away. She gave it no more thought after returning home on a Sunday, thinking everything was normal. It wasn’t.

A day later, the 29-year-old couldn’t hear out of her right ear. Through her healthcare providers, she was fast-tracked into the audiology clinic at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central, where she utterly failed a hearing test.

“I was deaf in my right ear,” she said. “If I put a phone up to my ear, I couldn’t hear it. I was crying because my life just changed, and I didn’t know why.”

That was more than a month ago. Today she has about 90% of her hearing back, thanks to multiple sessions of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO) in the hospital’s three hyperbaric chambers. Doctors are hopeful she’ll attain 100% with 10 more sessions.

“If we get them within two weeks of the onset of hearing loss, 50 to 60% get recovery, like Vanessa,” said Dr. Robert Price, medical director of hyperbaric medicine at the hospital. “If we get them after two weeks and after a month, because some people think they have wax in their ears or they think it’s just a head cold and their ears are stuffed, and don’t come in until four to six weeks down the road, those people usually have no benefit and have a permanent disability.”

Fans of Michael Jackson might remember photos of the pop star lying in a hyperbaric chamber from the mid-1980s. After being severely burned while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984, he used HBO to help heal. And then it was rumored he’d developed such an affection for the treatment that he bought his own chamber to sleep in at night with the hopes it would slow the aging process.

HBO can’t provide eternal life, but it can boast proven results in treating a number of conditions, including the sort of hearing loss Lopez endured, which Price calls idiopathic hearing loss, meaning its cause is unknown. HBO cannot treat age-related hearing loss.

During a 90-minute HBO session, a patient reclines inside a sealed-off, pressurized chamber while 100% pure oxygen is pumped in. The treatment increases the amount of oxygen delivered to body tissues through the bloodstream.

Through the years, HBO has been alleged to help dozens of conditions, such as autism, brain injury, Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, post-traumatic stress disorder and strokes.

“There are case reports, anecdotes that HBO will fix everything, so we have a history of being associated with quackery and snake oil,” Price said. “There are reports of children with autism, those with brain injury – that those patients benefited from HBO, but in good evidence-based, randomized, controlled trials, we’ve not been able to demonstrate it.”

UCHealth Memorial, one of four Colorado facilities accredited by the international nonprofit Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, is approved to use HBO to treat only 15 conditions. Its number one use is for radiation injury. No. 2 is diabetic wounds. Other conditions include hearing loss, carbon monoxide poisoning and scuba diving injuries.

The hospital began doing HBO in 1994 and has been accredited by UHMS since 2001. Obtaining treatment is done through physician referral.

“I oversee 12 departments,” said Kevin McQueen, director of hyperbaric medicine at the hospital. “This is my smallest physical department, but the accreditation for this is the most strenuous, detailed accreditation we ever do.”

Radiation injury happens when a cancer patient receives radiation treatments that damage nearby tissue or organs.

One patient, who had cancer on his tongue, was treated with HBO after radiation to his head and neck damaged neck tissue. The tissue wasn’t able to heal because it had been irradiated and couldn’t fight the infection. HBO, in addition to antibiotics, helped grow new blood vessels in the tissue, which helped fight the infection and heal the wound.

Diabetic wounds happen because diabetes affects large and small blood vessels. When small vessels are affected, like a patient who gets a wound after stepping on a nail, they don’t heal well. HBO helps grow new blood vessels to heal the wound.

The treatments work well, Price says, with about 70% of people finding relief.

“If you have areas that are swollen, it helps decrease swelling in the area, and it promotes the growth of new blood vessels in the tissue and helps our immune system fight bacteria and infections,” Price said. “We think it causes the growth of new blood vessels by having those high oxygen levels for 90 minutes, which causes growth factors to be released. And those growth factors then cause new blood vessels to grow.”

HARD-SHELL ACRYLIC VERSUS VINYL HYPERBARIC CHAMBERS

HBO chambers come in two styles: hard-shell acrylic, like those used at UCHealth Memorial, and vinyl, which are advertised by practitioners at alternative wellness clinics.

While hard-shell acrylic chambers can pressurize to the greater pressure that UHMS believes is effective, vinyl chambers, especially here in Colorado’s high altitude, cannot.

“There’s evidence for indications that aren’t approved (by UHMS),” Price said, “but not enough that when you’re doing this at this altitude, it’s probably creating a false hope. It’s not truly hyperbaric oxygen.”

Pikes Peak Hyperbaric Medicine, though not accredited by UHMS, uses hard-shell acrylic chambers. They use them differently than UCHealth, by pressurizing them with air and having the patient breathe oxygen through a mask. If insurance doesn’t approve a patient for service at UCHealth, Price will sometimes send them to Pikes Peak Hyperbaric, where they will treat an expanded range of conditions.

“It’s similar to what we do here but different,” he said. “You probably don’t get quite as high of a dose.”

A lack of safety standards at non-accredited facilities can be deadly. Earlier this year, a 5-year-old Michigan boy died inside a vinyl chamber at an alternative medicine facility after a fire broke out due to static electricity, according to the Detroit Free Press. Evidence showed staff didn’t follow safety standards that could have prevented a fire.

In July, a 43-year-old physical therapist, who owned a UHMS unaccredited alternative health clinic that used vinyl chambers, died inside one of his chambers in a flash fire.

“They’ll (unaccredited facilities) give people financing and tell them it’s going to cure them, and also put electric devices inside these oxygen-rich environments, which is probably unsafe,” Price said. “The fire marshals would probably not approve.”

UHMS accreditation, which enforces strict fire codes, happens every three years for facilities.

“That’s how important safety is,” McQueen said. “We have these off-label places that don’t have accreditation, and they don’t fall to the same safety standards. We’ve had our accreditation the longest of any facility in Colorado and one of the longest in the U.S.”

Details

Hyperbaric medicine at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central, by physician referral, 1400 E. Boulder St., 719-365-5000, uchealth.org/services/hyperbaric-medicine