Brain Damage Successfully Reversed by Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

Eden Carlson, just one day short of her second birthday, opened the heavy "child-proof" pool door and stepped into the family pool. Her mother noticed her absence and quickly went to the place she knew was the most dangerous place for her baby. She found her in the pool and immediately started CPR.

Finally, after two hours, Eden was resuscitated with the help of doctors at Washington Regional Medical Centre in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

She was discharged after 48 hours in the ICU, but the doctors said that her brain had sustained permanent injuries. They recommended normal-pressure oxygen therapy.

Eden's mother had learned about hyperbaric oxygen therapy from the internet and almost two months after the accident, she moved Eden to a treatment center in New Orleans, where she underwent a course in the hyperbaric chamber.

After forty sessions of treatment, Eden was able to walk and talk again. MRI images revealed only mild residual injuries to her brain.

While it is illogical to draw firm conclusions from a single case, this may indicate that a combination of normal-pressure and hyperbaric oxygen therapy may be effective for treating brain damage following drowning.

The researchers have reported their work in a paper, entitled "Subacute normobaric oxygen and hyperbaric oxygen therapy in drowning, reversal of brain volume loss: a case report", published in Medical Gas Research, 2017, 7:2, 144-149.

It should be noted that hyperbaric oxygen therapy is not a solution to every problem as it is claimed in unreliable internet websites. Only reliable scientific sources, such as the FDA, should be trusted for information in this regard.

References: 1, 2, 3