Landmark can’t wait to use its new ‘toy’
Blackstone Valley’s first hyperbaric chamber delivered to Medical Center
By RUSS OLIVO
WOONSOCKET — Sleek and see-through, the massive acrylic cylinder looks like it might have arrived from a distant science-fiction future, but it actually came on a truck from California.
And no, it’s not a movie prop, but real medicine – the Blackstone Valley’s first hyperbaric chamber.
Manufactured by Sechrist Industries of Anaheim, the $100,000 medical device was delivered Wednesday to a site on Cass Avenue opposite Landmark Medical Center where the hospital plans to open the new Landmark Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center later this summer.
“This brings us to a new level in the treatment of wound care,” said center director John Hall. “We’re already doing 21st century wound care, but this brings a new adjunctive therapy into the mix for 7-10 percent of patients who require specialized care. There’s very specific criteria we have to follow.”
Landmark currently runs a wound care center at the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island in North Smithfield, but it’s in the process of moving to 166 Cass Ave., the site of a former CVS Health pharmacy opposite Landmark.
The 3,000-square-foot facility will have five treatment rooms, a physicians office – and the only hyperbaric chambers in the region. The one that arrived this week is the first of two on order for the center, Hall said.
The Lifespan medical group operates a hyperbaric oxygen facility in East Providence, Fatima Hospital has one in North Providence and Kent Hospital has one in Warwick – and that’s it for the whole state,
according to Hall.
The chamber is basically a tank that allows patients to breathe pure oxygen under pressure several times greater than that of the normal atmosphere. Under those conditions, the lungs take in far more oxygen than usual, sending the gas through the bloodstream and through the tissues of the body.
The treatment is known to help fight bacteria and stimulate the release of natural chemical agents in the body that hasten the repair of damaged cells.
Anybody who pays attention to medical news has probably heard of hyperbaric oxygen used to treat all sorts of conditions and maladies, but Hall says many of the treatments are “off-label” uses whose effectiveness isn’t supported by scientific evidence or recognized by major insurance providers.
However, Hall says hyperbaric oxygen has a stellar track record of treating all sorts of hard-to-heal wounds, especially those associated with diabetes and cancer-related radia-
tion therapy. Those treatments, which are covered by Medicare and other insurers, are expected to be an important focus of the wound care center.
“It’s a transparent acrylic cylinder and what happens is a patient goes in there, wheeled in on a gurney, it’s closed up, and there’s a TV above them they can watch – it comes with the machine,” Hall explains. “The patients breathe 100 percent oxygen under pressure for up to two hours, five days a week, until their wounds are healed.”
The cylinder is about seven feet long and weighs about 3,000 pounds. It arrived on a tractor trailer and had to be wheeled into the Cass Avenue site on dollies, according to Hall.
Landmark Medical Center has hired an outside consultant, Wound Care Education Partners of Florida, to train the medical staff and nurses in the operation of the device. The hyperbaric chamber will be pressed into service after the training is complete, probably by the end of July, according to Hall.