Covid-19: Doctor calls for oxygen chamber treatment

Tuesday 21 April 2020

A local GP is calling for the Health Department to use the island's high-pressure oxygen chamber to treat patients with covid-19, after doctors abroad saw positive results.

Dr Mark Wilbourn of Windsor Medical Practice, is a Trustee of the Oxygen Therapy Centre charity and was previously a medical director for the diving hyperbaric chamber.

Oxygen Therapy can be used to ease the symptoms of a number of conditions, including Multiple Sclerosis (MS), fibromyalgia, neurological conditions, and some cases of traumatic brain injuries. Some islanders with cancer have also reported positive results in easing their symptoms.

It involves breathing in 100% (pure) oxygen under increased pressure to allow extra oxygen to be taken up by the bloodstream and absorbed at a far greater rate. 

This extra oxygen can help where healing is slowed down by infection or where blood supply is limited by damage to tissue.

Pictured: The Oxygen Therapy Centre is based at Oak Tree Gardens on Trinity Hill.

The Oxygen Therapy Centre, which moved to a larger facility at Oak Tree Gardens on Trinity Hill last year, has a 12-person double oxygen chamber – the only one in the island – and helps dozens of islanders every year. 

There is also a similar chamber in Guernsey, which can take semi-conscious divers on a stretcher and is used to treat decompression sickness and other diving-related illnesses. However, it is closed at present as commercial and recreational diving have been deemed non-essential activities.

Dr Wilbourn – who himself uses the chamber to help relieve the symptoms of multiple sclerosis – is now suggesting the chambers could be used to help Channel Islands patients with covid-19, as other doctors have used them abroad and encountered positive results.

“The Oxygen Therapy Centre (OTC) charity have a chamber able to go to 2ATA in Jersey and the Guernsey chamber probably goes to 6.0ATA. You only need 1.4-1.6ATA for CoVID-19  as treatment,” he explained. “1.5 ATA is a similar proportional pressure change to going in a pressurised aeroplane, so that’s probably why that pressure was chosen.”

“The problem with covid-19 is that the haemoglobin stops carrying oxygen into the body,” he added. “The oxygen cannot go into the blood because the haemoglobin stops working properly.

“One of the solutions is increasing the level of oxygen that is dissolved into the plasma, which normally can’t carry enough oxygen for people to survive. It makes a lot of sense to use the hyperbaric chamber for this.” 

Pictured: The chamber can accommodate 12 people.

While Dr Wilbourn says the Oxygen Therapy Centre could be involved, they haven’t been approached by the government so far.

However, he has made several approaches himself to Health Department officials, as well as the Health Minister, Deputy Richard Renouf, to get the ball rolling.

“You need to use it once every day for five days between 90 and 120 minutes. If the centre stopped all other activities and worked around the clock, that’s about 144 patients a week," Dr Wilbourn explained.

“There is not the staff at the moment, but if everybody pulled out all the stops, additional staff could be found. Anybody can learn to be an operator.

“I would love for the government to get in touch and say, 'Can we use the chamber?’"