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In the interest of enhanced patient care, Old Town Animal Hospital
offers its hyperbaric chamber for use by area veterinarians!
Find out how your patients can benefit from hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
For more details and technical information, click here.
Katy Animal Hospital Gets Oxygen Therapy Equipment
By Luciano Battistini
Times Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, June 21, 2009 12:14 AM CDT
Old Town Animal Hospital is introducing a treatment that has worked miracles in human injuries and is now available for animal companions in the Katy area.
A hyperbaric chamber has been added to the animal hospital’s toolbox. Old Town Animal Hospital is the only animal clinic with this technology in south Texas.
“This is a wonderful addition to our hospital,” Office Manager Michelle Hicks said. “We’ve already seen impressive results in some of our patients.”
One of those patients is a 14-year-old daschund named Maggie who received treatment after undergoing surgery.
Postoperative patients benefit greatly from the healing treatment, called hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT).
Immediate results include the reduction of tissue swelling and inflammation and the decrease in pain associated with these processes.
The way HBOT works is by forcing oxygen into the body of a person, or in this case an animal, and significantly helping the healing process.
Dogs or cats step inside the hyperbaric chamber, which is 35 inches in diameter and receive the treatment usually for 10-20 minutes at 20-10 psi.
“A good visual of how it works is that it’s almost like having an unopened soda bottle,” HBOT trainer Shelena Hoberg said.
“When it is unopened you can’t see the pressure in the soda molecules, but when it is opened then you can see the bubbles being released from the pressure. It’s the same concept.”
Adequate tissue perfusion and sufficient oxygen supply are two basic requirements for the body’s healing responses.
Without these elements, tissues soon enter a hypoxic state. Hypoxia impairs many healing processes and has also been shown to slow wound healing while favoring bacterial growth.
HBOT accelerates the normal healing mechanisms by increasing the concentration of oxygen dissolved in plasma, thereby facilitating delivery to tissues with poor blood circulation or compromised vascular supply.
Tissue oxygenation is improved and it helps stimulate the proliferation of fibroblasts and endothelial cells.
“This is critical to having a good recovery in tissue,” Equine Oxygen Therapy representative Gerard First said.
HBOT also makes the activity of many antibiotics more potent while at the same time increasing their tissue penetration.
The treatment decreases the growth and viability or many microorganisms while enhancing antibiotic effectiveness and the patient’s immune response.
Early HBOT greatly improves the prognosis for many acute conditions and decreases the likelihood of them becoming chronic problems.
Some examples of common procedures that benefit particularly from HBOT include fracture repair, amputations, skin grafts, wounds (specially the non-healing kind), burns and smoke inhalation, crush injuries and head and spinal cord trauma.
HBOT is an important tool in companion animal medicine. From the canine athlete to the family pet, the possibilities for this treatment modality are endless and now available for Katy pets.
Copyright © 2009 - The Katy Times
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