FAQ-18

18) Why are some physicians using 1.75 ATA for treating pediatric brain injury?

Many feel that if a little is good then more is better, but when using HBOT to treat chronic brain injury this logic is misguided, and has in fact been the primary reason for the lack of progress in the acceptance in using HBOT for treating brain injury. The key to this misperception of MORE IS BETTER is rooted in the failure to realize that HBOT is a drug. Like all drugs, oxygen at pressure has a therapeutic window; too low a dose is ineffective and too high, or too frequent, a dose is both ineffective and toxic.

So, MORE IS NOT BETTER. Besides toxicity there is metabolic fatigue to take into account. Brain injured children should be treated at no more than 1.5 ATA, and large blocks of treatments after there have already been 80 treatments could cause deterioration and complications.

Whether it is for personal or monetary reasons, those that want to pretend that HBOT has no benefit for the brain injured still out number those that know it has benefit; nevertheless, the net effect of this obfuscation is that there has been no accepted protocol for this indication. But the most experienced physicians in this area will tell you that the protocol should not deviate from 1.5 ATA/60 minutes unless there has been treatment failure. In other words, a chronic TBI who was partially treated at 1.5 ATA (received only 20 treatments for example) may find it necessary to be retreated at a higher pressure than 1.5 ATA when treatment is resumed at a later date. This is one of the reasons we discourage partial treatments.

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