Updates on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy From SAWC Fall

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I'm Rodney Lindsay. I'm the medical director of the Comprehensive Wounds Center in Carrollton, Texas at the Carrollton Regional Medical Center. I've been doing wound care there for about 15 years.
 
What updates are there in hyperbaric oxygen therapy and wound care?
 
So as far as hyperbaric and new indications, there's really not a lot of new things and not anything new that pertains to podiatry but there are certainly some other indications that can be useful to our patients. One of the newest ones is going to be the acute or sudden sensorineural hearing loss is a big one because again patients who suddenly lose their hearing have an option to help to restore their hearing.
 
Another one was thermal burns is another newer one that has come along that I'm again fairly new that I haven't even had the chance to use it yet, but it's a great application for our patients who have severe burns.
 
And then another one that's fairly new is gonna be, again, just the central retinal artery obstruction. Again, also it can be another common indication that would be considered fairly new.
 
Otherwise, most of the indications are still the same ones that we've been doing for quite a while. And for podiatry, the things that will be important is that it's ... it's still very important for the diabetic foot and helping us to make sure that we have enough circulation to help heal the wounds.
 
What challenges do you feel clinicians face in pursuing this treatment option? How can providers productively incorporate HBOT into their practices?
 
The challenges that we face when we're trying to pursue hyperbaric is going to mostly revolve around getting it approved by insurance or any type of a payer source. That's certainly a huge hurdle for us. Once we can do that, the patients also... have to overcome the fact that they have a daily treatment, something they have to do every day and that sometimes is a little bit difficult whether it's just the actual time burden or the transportation burden.
 
So it's something that again for some patients can really be a real deal-breaker but otherwise I feel like if we can get the patients and then educate them well enough into what hyperbaric does, how they can benefit from it ,and then get it approved and then like I said, those are our goals to overcome the challenges.
 
And then one of the most important things that providers can do to incorporate hyperbaric into their practice is going to be the fact that they actually refer the patients for hyperbaric. So when I think about how many different clinicians are in my area, let's say podiatrists, local family physicians, internists, those who maybe deal with diabetic foot patients but don't actually have a hyperbaric facility or a hyperbaric option in their own, we'll say office, then they really need to try and get them to a center like we have where they can again get that treatment because it is considered the standard of care.

And if the patients are basically in an area where hyperbaric is available and they're not being referred for it, it can certainly make things very tricky for the referring provider as well as office delay treatment for the patient.