2023-10-27 09:43:00
Diving accidents, infections from anaerobic germs, carbon monoxide poisoning, serious trauma. These are the so-called ‘time-dependent pathologies’, so called because, if not treated immediately, they bring the patient’s clinical picture into a situation that could be irrecoverable and consequently lead to death or permanent disability. For them the only salvation is represented by the Hyperbaric Centers “where over-70s also arrive with a passion for scuba diving, victims of decompression accidents” explains Claudio Spena, head of Hyperbaric Medicine of the Italian Society of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Therapy to time.news Health. intensive on the occasion of the 77th Siaarti Congress underway in Rome.
“These patients fall within the spectrum of action of the resuscitation doctor, already accustomed to responding to the most serious and important pathologies from the point of view of impact – states Spena who is also Head of Intrahospital Emergency Plans Asl2 Savonese – In the public hyperbaric centers at within the hospitals, managed by specialists in anesthesia and resuscitation, however a lot of elective therapy is carried out and patients are also treated on an outpatient basis to treat, for example, the consequences of chronic pathologies such as diabetes, essentially infections of the lower limbs (diabetic foot)”.
In the San Martino hospital in Genoa, “where I worked until two years ago – says the expert – every year there were around 200 emergency operations for pathologies that in some way required treatment in a hyperbaric chamber”. However, “we still don’t have complete national data – Spena regrets – because there is no ad hoc database”.
And new frontiers in hyperbaric therapy were discussed during the Siaarti Congress “also with international experts precisely because the indications in the neurological field are new both from a research and clinical point of view”. However, for Spena “we specialists at hyperbaric centers are a limited group in the field of anesthesia and resuscitation. Normally, anesthetists do not work in a hyperbaric chamber, they are called upon, especially during holiday shifts, to provide support to these centers in case of emergency. Sometimes they know little about it, and this is a problem. Training is fundamental but if the specialist has no longer worked in a hyperbaric center for fifteen years, the training I did at the time of specialization school is a distant memory. Therefore the updating must be continuous” she concludes.
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