Poster: Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Improves Microcirculatory Oxygenation in Problem Wounds Over the Course of Successive Treatments

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a novel, non-invasive technology with the potential to monitor oxygenation within wound beds and surrounding tissue. A poster presented at SAWC Fall aimed to assess how hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) affects microcirculatory oxygenation in a variety of indications using NIRS.

The authors hypothesized that tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) would noticeably increase following HBOT treatment while offering a method of determining oxygen status within the wound bed. The study focused on patients who received standard of care with HBOT (2.0 ATA, 90 minutes, no air breaks). The patients had three diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) among them.

The poster notes average tissue oxygen saturation increased from 72.9% to 77.4%, with the DFUs experiencing an average increase of 0.4%, 5.3%, and 8%, respectively. Five of the six patients had noticeable increases in StO2 (>2%), while the last patient had virtually no difference in StO2 (average 0.4% increase per HBOT), notes the poster. Authors note the DFU with a minimal change in StO2 can partially be attributed to hyperoxemia within the wound bed.

Notably, NIRS was able to identify oxygen saturations within areas of concern, which authors say would be a limitation of the current gold standard technology of transcutaneous oxygen measurement.

Poster CR-041 was featured at SAWC Fall 2021.