BUTTE, Mont. — Hyperbaric chambers have been in use to help with wound care for some time, but a new machine at Intermountain Health St. James is helping patients stay close to home to receive care.
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"It’s almost like a family situation up here, you know? They call you by name, you know? And they remember what’s going on in your life," said Kathy Davis, a former wound care patient at the Butte hospital.
Davis lives an active lifestyle, volunteering at the food bank, bowling and carrying out everyday tasks. When she developed a painful wound during a hospital stay that wouldn’t heal, her life changed.
"Being housebound... you know, stuck on the couch, not being able to walk without either a cane or a walker, it was hard. It was a change for me," Davis said.
Doctors decided to try hyperbaric oxygen therapy combined with an infusion to treat Kathy’s infection. Over the summer, she spent five days a week for eight weeks, receiving treatment in the new machine that provides an oxygen-saturated environment in a specially designed pressurized chamber.
"Some of these patients are coming in, and they have wounds for two years, three years, and they haven’t really healed," said Tony Ballensky, a family nurse practitioner in wound care.
When Ballensky started as a nurse, he did a lot of wound care. He says there were not a lot of options for people struggling with the pain and life changes that come with debilitating wounds that won’t heal.
"These patients that do have those long chronic wounds, we can get those patients healed, and they don’t have those wounds anymore," Ballensky said.
By increasing the amount of oxygen carried in the bloodstream, hyperbaric therapy can help the body heal damaged tissues, fight certain infections and improve recovery in areas where blood flow has been reduced.
The therapy is used to treat a variety of conditions, including wound healing, severe infections and carbon monoxide poisoning. For patients like Davis, the benefit of receiving care all in one place was crucial.
"It was nice to be able to say, you know, you could stay in Butte, you didn’t have to travel because you had enough to worry about without the added time spent in the car on the highway," she said.
