Study Probes Pure Oxygen's Healing Properties

Main Category: Dermatology
Also Included In: Diabetes
Article Date: 18 Apr 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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Pure oxygen therapy is reputed to have many medical benefits, including saving limbs from amputation, and a QUT researcher is setting out to explore its healing properties.

PhD researcher James Broadbent, from Queensland University of Technology's School of Life Sciences, is studying pure oxygen, or hyperbaric, therapy's effects on chronic wounds.

"An abundance of anecdotal evidence suggests that hyperbaric oxygen therapy significantly reduces the need for chronic leg and foot ulcer sufferers to undergo limb amputation," Mr Broadbent said.

"But there have been no scientific trials conducted to explain exactly why and how it works."

Hyperbaric treatment is administered via a steel chamber that the patient enters spending up to 90 minutes per session.

Mr Broadbent said finding out why hyperbaric oxygen therapy was such a powerful healer had the potential to contribute to new treatment and monitoring strategies for chronic ulcer sufferers.

"It could lead to increased patient quality of life and relieve the financial strain on the healthcare system with treatments extending over long periods draining an estimated $500 million from the Australian healthcare system," Mr Broadbent said.

"It may also make it easier for patients to be able to claim the treatment under Medicare and likely increase the popularity of the therapy."

Mr Broadbent has been granted a $21,000 Smart State Government PhD scholarship to fund the research.

Chronic leg and foot ulcers are estimated to affect up to 3 per cent of people over 60.

Current treatment often requires hospitalisation but despite such intensive care leg ulcers are difficult to heal.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has also been used to treat conditions including burns, gangrene, near drowning, severed limbs, smoke inhalation, carbon monoxide poisoning and near electrocution.

Mr Broadbent is conducting the research with the assistance of the Wesley Centre for Hyperbaric Medicine and the Cell and Molecular Proteomics Mass Spectrometry Facility at University of Queensland.

The Smart State PhD Scholarships program is part of the Government's $200 million Smart State Innovation Funds, which are designed to help build world-class research facilities, attract top quality scientists and stimulate cutting-edge research projects in Queensland.

Queensland University of Technology