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Last week officials at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary unveiled a trio of hyperbaric chambers, pressurized units designed to compress patients and more effectively deliver oxygen to them.
Oxygen administered at above-normal pressures (called hyperbaric) is used to treat a number of medical conditions.
"It is a rapidly growing area of medicine," said Dr. Richard Fabian, medical director of the hospital's recently christened Norman Knight Hyperbaric Medicine Center. "We were the catalyst for chambers to open in other geographical areas, not just in Massachusetts, but around New England."
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a simple concept. Administering oxygen when a patient is under greater pressure puts more oxygen in a patient's bloodstream, increasing oxygen delivery to injured tissues and boosting blood vessel formation.
The air that we breathe, however, only contains 21 percent oxygen -- not enough to impart...