Main points of the article:
- A pressure chamber is a closed structure into which high-pressure air is injected in order to raise the atmospheric pressure, within which the patients receive air with a 100% oxygen concentration.
- Hyperbaric therapy or pressure chamber therapy allows to increase the level of oxygen in the blood and body tissues and therefore encourages healing processes, creation of new blood vessels, anti-inflammatory processes and more.
- Israeli studies point to the advantage of pressure chamber treatment in a variety of new pathological conditions, such as post-trauma, post-corona, and even in conditions of cognitive deterioration with age, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.
________________________________________
What is a pressure cell?
A pressure chamber is an airtight structure made of durable materials that allows control of the atmospheric pressure inside it by flowing air and compressing it. During the stay in a pressure chamber, patients breathe oxygen at a high concentration in a closed space, when the pressure in it exceeds the normal atmospheric pressure. A pressure chamber contains up to 20 patients at the same time, with each of them wearing a mask to breathe oxygen. The patients breathe oxygen from the mask at a concentration of 100%, compared to the normal concentration of 21%, while air is pumped into the chamber at a pressure 2.4-3 times higher than normal atmospheric pressure.
The history of pressure chamber
In 1900, the American doctor Orwell Cunningham recognized that patients with circulatory disorders experienced an improvement in their condition when they stayed at sea level compared to the mountains, where the air pressure is lower. Medical treatment using a pressure chamber began in the 1960s, and in Israel in the 1970s at the Naval Medical Institute of the Navy. The use of a pressure chamber was mainly used to treat victims of diving accidents who experienced decompression, air embolism and oxygen poisoning.
What is treated in a pressure chamber?
Pressure chamber therapy is called hyperbaric medicine. Its purpose is to take advantage of the fact that oxygen is carried to the tissues of the body through the hemoglobin in the red cells, as well as through pulsation from the blood plasma to the tissues. When the number of oxygen molecules in the air increases, the solubility of oxygen in the blood increases and as a result the oxygen concentration in the plasma also increases, so that the amount of oxygen reaching the body tissues increases significantly, up to 20 times.
Pressure chamber treatment at the Shamir-Assaf Harofeh hospital. Photo: Hospital spokeswoman
Treatment in a pressure chamber allows speeding up the recovery of many pathological conditions, when they have in common a lack of oxygen in the tissue, and it helps the body on several levels:
- Significantly increases the oxygen level in tissues suffering from low oxygen levels.
- Helps heal wounds in diabetics and patients with blood vessel problems.
- Encourages the formation of new blood vessels in damaged tissues.
- Encourages the creation of new bone tissue by hyperactivity of the bone cells.
- Improves the efficiency of white blood cells that fight infections.
- Effective in the treatment of edema due to a blood vessel problem or after injuries.
- Effective as an anti-inflammatory treatment.
- Effective in the treatment of autoimmune inflammations.
- Encourages the proliferation of stem cell production in the bone marrow.
- Encourages self-production of antioxidant enzymes.
In the various hospitals, the pressure chamber is marketed as treatments for a wide number of medical conditions, including: wounds that are difficult to heal, bone infections, necrosis/edema of the bone or of the skin, sudden sensorineural hearing loss, sudden loss of field of vision due to retinal artery blockage, therapeutic damage Ionizing radiation, sports injuries, chronic pain syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, post-corona syndrome, post-concussion syndrome, cognitive decline as well as neurological damage after a stroke.
Studies on pressure chamber
In 2022, an Israeli study from Tel Aviv University and the Shamir Medical Center (Assaf Harofeh) was published in the journal PlosOne, which conducted pressure chamber treatments for 35 discharged IDF soldiers who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. The soldiers were divided into two groups: one was treated in a pressure chamber and the other served as a control group. After 60 treatments, improvements were found in all post-traumatic symptoms. The results of the study showed that exposure to mental trauma can lead to organic brain damage, and establish a better understanding of the mind-body connection. The brain wound was a barrier to treating the syndrome with psychological or psychiatric means, but the biological treatment in a pressure chamber enabled the activation of mechanisms that were required to heal the damaged brain tissue.
Another study conducted at the Shamir Medical Center between 2020-2021 showed that pressure chamber treatment is considered effective in post-corona cases. Prof. Shay Efrati, director of the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research at the Shamir Medical Center, reported that over 80% of patients have returned to their previous disease state, with significant cognitive improvement in all affected brain areas that are responsible for attention and function. In addition, a significant improvement in energy levels, ability to sleep, a decrease in pain levels and a reduction in psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety have been reported.
This month, the journal Aging published a study by Tel Aviv University that conducted a series of treatments in a pressure chamber on experimenters over the age of 65 with decreased brain functions, a stage before Alzheimer’s and dementia. The experimenters underwent 60 treatments in a pressure chamber over a period of 90 days. MRI showed that the treatment led to improved blood flow in the brain and even real improvements in cognitive performance.
In recent years, the research in the pressure chamber has expanded and worldwide the possibility of expanding their use to new indications is being examined. However, the method of international organizations, such as the US Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, has situations where there is no sufficient scientific basis for use. The FDA also clarified that the therapeutic effectiveness of pressure chamber therapy is not proven in conditions such as cancer, Lyme disease, autism and Alzheimer’s.
Ministry of Health warning regarding pressure chamber
The pressure chamber has gained a new and popular status as the new anti-aging treatment for celebrities around the world, and in Israel, too, an industry of pressure chambers has developed, operated by private institutes without a license from the Ministry of Health and offering treatments to anyone who can afford the price.
In 2020, the Ministry of Health published a warning notice regarding pressure chamber treatments that did not receive the Ministry of Health’s approval for their operation. The warning dealt with a pressure chamber in private institutes that operate without a license and supervision from the Ministry of Health, and advertise the hyperbaric treatment as helpful for various diseases and medical conditions, including fibromyalgia, attention and concentration disorders, autism, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, sports injuries, various types of cancer, and more. The Ministry of Health wanted to emphasize that a review of scientific literature on these issues shows that to date there is no scientific evidence for all the supposedly beneficial effects, and for the healing properties attributed to staying in a pressure chamber.
According to the Knesset’s Information Center report published in 2022, the Ministry of Health closed down 10-15 pressure chambers in recent years that operated without a license and were defined as pirates.
The pressure chambers approved by the Ministry of Health are in the following medical centers: Elisha Hospital in Haifa; Shamir Hospital (Asaf Harofeh) in Tsirifin; Institute of Marine Medicine in Haifa; Yoseftal Hospital in Eilat; Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem; Sourasky Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
Pressure chamber in medicine in Israel
The report of the Knesset Research and Information Center prepared a document that deals with the issue of the unequal distribution of the pressure chamber in Israel, and indicated that out of six pressure chambers in Israel, only two of them are in the north: at Elisha Private Hospital and the Navy facility, and only one is in the south: at the Yoseftal Medical Center in Eilat.
Pressure chamber at the Ichilov Hospital. Photo: Lior Tzur/ Ichilov Spokesperson
The report also published that the last Ministry of Health circular that defined the 15 indications for pressure chamber treatment, which were included in the basket of health services, was published more than 20 years ago, in 1999, despite the expansion of scientific knowledge in the field. Not only that, the report indicated that the Ministry of Health has partial data on the scope of pressure chamber treatments, according to which in each of the years 2018-2020 approximately 1,000-3,000 people received the treatment, and each year between 40 thousand and 54 thousand treatments were given. The ministry did not say whether the data includes treatments given in hospitals that are not part of the basket and in which hospitals the treatments were given.