Tag: Hyperbaric Medicine

Veterinarians are always on the lookout for novel technologies that will assist them in the treatment of animals in their care. Often, the latest treatments can be expensive, ineffective or traumatic for animals and their owners, making them unappealing on several levels.

Interested in offering hyperbaric oxygen treatment at your veterinarian clinic?
Call: 850-510-2781

Hyperbaric medicine is different. Unlike many traditional therapies, veterinary hyperbaric oxygen therapy can ameliorate a number of conditions without causing animals any distress or the use of invasive procedures.

What Is Oxygen Therapy For Pets?

Hyperbaric medicine for pets, sometimes called oxygen therapy, is a type of treatment that involves keeping the pet in a high-oxygen environment. The veterinarian places the animal in a special, transparent container and then switches on the system, changing the atmospheric composition from normal levels of oxygenation (around 20 percent), up to close to 100 percent.

Although it seems like a simple measure, it’s only recently that researchers have begun to recognize the real therapeutic potential of hyperbaric medicine. Animals with seemingly intractable health issues often improve with HBOT for pets. For some conditions, it can have almost miraculous effects.

Why Should Veterinarians Offer Hyperbaric Medicine For Pets?

It’s Doesn’t Cause Pets Distress
Manufacturers design hyperbaric animal chambers intending to give pets peace of mind. An animal hyperbaric chamber is a special device that reduces feelings of distress and helps the pet relax during treatment.

It Increases Trust Between Vets And Owners
If veterinarians can offer hyperbaric medicine for pets, they stand a better chance of helping animals recover from ailments and developing a deeper trust with their owners. Most owners don’t want their pets to undergo dangerous or risky procedures. If there’s a risk-free alternative, they’ll it. Veterinarian hyperbaric treatment is a low-risk alternative to traditional therapy.

It Is Often More Effective Than Standard Treatment
For many conditions and health problems, which we will discuss below, pet oxygen therapy is more effective than standard procedures. Pets and owners can see better results from this type of treatment than they would with regular medication or surgery.

What Does Hyperbaric Medicine For Pets Treat?

Since the 1940s, medical practitioners have used HBOT on divers who ascend too fast to the surface and experience decompression sickness. The idea was to get as much oxygen as possible into the blood and displace other more dangerous gases. But over time, new research has found that this specific therapy can treat a wide variety of conditions in both humans and animals.

Here are some of the common conditions that veterinarians can treat using oxygen therapy.

• • Swelling. Swelling is a healing mechanism that animals use to protect damaged tissue and supply the site of injury with nutrients required for repair. However, for some injuries, such as crush injuries and post-operative, the swelling can be a hindrance to recovery. Clinical observation suggests that the benefits of injury recovery with hyperbarics for pets is substantial. The increased oxygenation of the blood helps to open up blood vessels, reduce swelling and enable healing factors to travel to the site of injury. Animals tend to recover much faster when in hyperbaric therapy because of the treatment’s ability to spur the growth of new blood vessels to supply the wound with the raw materials it needs for recovery.

• Smoke Inhalation. Animals exposed to fire and smoke can benefit from hyperbaric medicine for several reasons. First, an animal exposed to smoke may be suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Carbon monoxide binds to the hemoglobin in the blood, preventing it from picking up the oxygen that the animal needs for normal respiration. If left untreated, the animal can suffocate and suffer brain damage. Oxygen chambers at one-to-three times sea-level air pressure help to force more oxygen into a pet’s red blood cells, ensuring that they get enough oxygen as the CO leaves their system. Pet oxygen chambers can also be ideal for when a pet is suffering from fire-induced thermal injury, hydrogen cyanide poisoning, or neurologic damage.
• Pancreatitis. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy may be able to help pets that are suffering from pancreatitis, a condition in which the digestive enzymes released by the pancreas begin to exert their effect before entering the intestines.
• Near-Drowning. When an animal has been underwater, unable to breathe, for a considerable period, it’s vital to help establish oxygen levels as quickly as possible. Pet oxygen chambers do this by calming the animal and increasing the amount of oxygen available to their cells.
• Wounds That Don’t Want To Heal. Sometimes, when there is restricted blood flow, injuries do not heal. Blood cannot get to the affected area on the pet’s body, preventing the normal healing process. Oxygen therapy, however, can be an effective way to restore blood supply and kickstart the healing process. A regular schedule of treatment can soon restore blood flow and help the animal towards a faster recovery.

Why Is Pet Oxygen Therapy So Powerful?

Researchers offer several explanations for why pet oxygen therapy is such a potent intervention.

One of the primary mechanisms appears to be the anti-inflammatory effect. Evidence suggests that a high-pressure, high-oxygen environment upregulates genes associated with fighting inflammation and downregulates those that create it. Lower inflammation leads to less swelling which, in turn, allows more of the healing factors to reach the site of injury.

A second mechanism is the increased blood flow to the affected tissue. As blood becomes more oxygenated and oxygen tension increases, it gets easier for it to deliver healing factors to the affected site and begin the recovery process. In some injuries, especially trauma and crush injuries, blood flow can be cut off. But with hyperbaric treatment and better blood oxygenation, there’s a greater ability for particles to diffuse into the affected tissues.

Veterinarians who are serious about hyperbaric therapy should investigate veterinary hyperbaric chamber for sale. Access to a pet oxygen chamber allows veterinary practices to offer superior treatment to pets, giving owners more options over which treatment their animal receives.

Veterinarians are always on the lookout for novel therapies that can help the animals under their care recover from trauma and disease. One such innovation is the hyperbaric pet oxygen chamber, a device that has surprising efficacy in assisting animals in returning to health following injury, accidental ingestion of food, problems with the lungs and even skin ailments.

Interested in offering hyperbaric oxygen treatment at your veterinarian clinic?
Call: 850-510-2781

What Is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy?

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a well-established and scientifically proven therapy for dealing with a wide range of medical conditions. Historically, doctors have used it to treat patients with decompression sickness — a condition affecting divers who return to the surface too quickly. However, in recent years vets have discovered its usefulness in treating a range of conditions experienced by animals in their care.

The way hyperbaric medicine works is simple. The vet places the affected animal inside a chamber filled with oxygen. Special machinery then increases the pressure in the chamber to around three atmospheres – or three times the pressure at sea level. The animal then remains in the chamber for the duration of the treatment, usually around two hours.

The Benefits Of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy For Pets

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy or HBOT has assumed an ever-expanding role in modern medicine practices-for both humans and pets. In veterinary medicine, hyperbaric oxygen therapy continues to demonstrate its effectiveness in primary and adjunctive care. It offers significant medical benefits through enhanced wound healing, improved infection control, and preservation of damaged tissues; plus several more. It also helps alleviate the growing number of complicated, expensive or otherwise hopeless medical problems.

It Improves The Supply Of Oxygen To Affected Tissues

It is important to note that the benefits of HBOT result from an oxygen-enriched bloodstream and not from the oxygen’s direct contact with the wound. The addition of oxygen into the blood increases the oxygen diffusion distance from the functioning capillaries in a hyperfocused wound to cause stimulation of growth resulting in wound healing. Using a pressurized oxygen chamber to treat an animal helps improve the flow of oxygen to different parts of a pet’s body and dramatically elevates the amount of oxygen delivered to the body’s tissues by the blood.

It Can Treat A Wide Range Of Conditions

Over recent years, the use of HBOT in clinical use has progressed causing it to be an advantageous form of medicine.
It offers a copious amount of advantages to veterinarians and their patients including a growing number of allowed treatable indications. Such as peripheral neuropathies, pancreatitis, inflammatory diseases, snake bites, and many more. For an extensive list of permitted indications, please visit our About HBOT page or click here: http://bit.ly/SiVetHealth

Pet Oxygen Chamber Treatments are Affordable

Not only is HBOT a rapid and effective treatment, but it is also remarkably affordable compared to many conventional procedures. In comparison to surgery or more complicated treatments, HBOT is inexpensive, easy and straightforward. Animals are merely placed in a pressurized container with a blanket and allowed to recover. For comparison, it is no more expensive than acupuncture or laser treatments.

It Is Relaxing For The Animals

Unlike many procedures, HBOT chambers provide pets with a relaxing and peaceful environment. Many of them enjoy the treatment. Also, Sechrist’s hyperbaric oxygen chambers are made with a clear acrylic cylinder and come with clear modules for easy monitoring. The clear acrylic of both the chamber and module aids in keeping an animal calm and collected by allowing them to see their surrounding environment and the technician seated outside the chamber.

It Can Speed Up The Healing Process

One way a pet oxygen chamber works is by speeding up the process of healing. The chamber completes this process by increasing the amount of oxygen running through the animal’s body to help deliver vital nutrients to cells. Cells then use the additional oxygen to go about their repair processes, ensuring that the animal heals quicker.. Extra oxygen encourages the release of growth factors and stem cells that make the healing process faster.

Should You Use HBOT For The Pets In Your Care?

Considering HBOT has a growing number of indications for clinical use and decreases the time it takes or an animal to heal, a veterinarian can increase the number of animals they treat. Making an HBOT chamber a very viable investment choice for one’s practice.

For many animal owners, hyperbaric oxygen therapy is far more preferable to other forms of treatment, such as surgery. Just like people, it can take pets many weeks, if not months, to recover after going under the knife. HBOT can potentially negate the need for surgery or could help surgical wounds heal quickly and naturally.

Many veterinarians today are considering HBOT for their clients due to the many benefits it provides to both pets and their owners. Plus SV500 hyperbaric animal chambers have a dual purpose ICU functionality that allows you to deliver both hyperbaric oxygen therapy and enhanced O2 oxygen therapy at ambient pressure. It is operator friendly with indicators and operational flexibility. Furthermore, the installation of HBOT systems is easy. A trained technician installs the chamber with the provided adapters and hoses while maximizing space by conveniently locating all connections in the back of the chamber.

Increased Pressure Leads To Anti-Inflammatory Gene Expression

Leading the list of HBOT benefits is the effect higher pressures have on the genome. When vets expose animal tissue to higher pressures, it induces changes in the epigenome, down regulating inflammatory genetic expression — resulting in a critical synergistic therapeutic method for reducing inflammation. This reduction in inflammation has implications for treating animals with both trauma and pathogen-caused disease.

Better Oxygen Delivery To Trauma Sites And Injuries

When trauma or crush injury occurs, there can be a reduction in blood flow and swelling to the area. By placing pets in an HBOT chamber breathing 100% oxygen, veterinarians can increase oxygen tension levels by 10 to 20 times that of normobaric oxygen breathing. This level increase in oxygen tension allows for faster and better healing of the animal.

Rapid Removal Of Carbon Monoxide From Blood Cells

Pets can suffer carbon monoxide poisoning just like people. When carbon monoxide poisoning happens, it’s vital to unbind the CO molecule from the red blood cells as fast as possible. Evidence suggests that HBOT may help this process by rapidly removing carbon monoxide molecules from hemoglobin and deliver dissolved oxygen via plasma.

Reduction In Toxin Formation By Gangrene Pathogens

Lastly, HBOT appears to inhibit the ability of the gangrene causing pathogen that prompts the release of deadly toxins. Pets, therefore, undergoing HBOT treatment may benefit from being placed in an oxygen chamber.

As chamber technology advances and HBOT treatments gain notoriety vets must expand their knowledge on potential indications. Staying up to date can help give animal patients the best possible care by providing access to the finest treatments on the market.

With the application of HBOT treatments in both clinical and adjunctive care, veterinary medicine is only going to improve further and develop.

Shouldn’t your practice be at the forefront of hyperbaric medicine?