Hyperbaric medicine
Résumé
Oxygen (both its presence and absence) acts as a potent signaling mechanism in many, if not
most, cellular processes.
Oxygen has been used therapeutically mainly to alleviate or correct hypoxia, and has been
administered in supra-atmospheric doses in the form of hyperbaric oxygen (a method derived from
diving medicine practices, but has been used in non-diving applications since the 1960s).
Hyperbaric oxygen is, by definition, administered in an intermittent way, and in recent years,
even the effects of intermittent oxygen administration at non-hyperbaric doses have been investigated
and showed interesting results. Since the very beginning, because hyperbaric oxygen therapy relies
on pure physics and just applying increased environmental pressure will increase partial pressure of
the breathed gases (namely, oxygen), the therapeutic mechanisms involved were believed to be fully
understood.
Nowadays, all reported data demonstrate how hyperoxic and hypoxic states can potentially be
manipulated if oxygen is considered as a multifaceted molecule more than just a gas.
The certainties and the dogma of when hyperbaric medicine was in its adolescence are slowly
being replaced.
Hyperbaric medicine is slowly moving out of its infancy. However, as in real life, with the
progression away from infancy, the certainties disappear. It is now our task, as researchers, to reflect
upon these uncertainties and distil out of them a coherent, balanced advice towards divers. Let us
not jump to conclusions too fast, as our new “certainties”may very well prove to be “not the whole
story”again. This reprint is dedicated to increase knowledge in this very interesting field, and present
hyperbaric medicine in not so usual applications.