Pleiotropic Effects of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and Its Potency as Supplemental Therapy

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a therapeutic technique of administering oxygen at high purity under pressure higher than the normal atmospheric pressure. Oxygen has an inherent capacity to stimulate physiological and biochemical changes which have a great therapeutic value. The effects include enhanced bactericidal activity by enhancement of immune cells, reduction of edema by promoting vasoconstriction, maintenance of an oxidative environment which promotes vascularization, collagen synthesis, and localized free radical production. Due to a wide array of its functional attributes, HBOT finds use in a large number of clinical indications as an adjuvant therapy especially in post-clinical and recovering patients. HBOT has proved to be beneficial in clinical applications but requires a thorough understanding of the underlying mechanism of therapeutic action to establish it as a standard therapeutic approach. This review gives an account of the development of HBOT from a historical perspective and its current applications, efficacy, and future prospects as a therapeutic intervention.