Quirónsalud Tenerife Boosts Advanced Treatments with New Hyperbaric Chamber

Advanced medical treatments in the Canary Islands are getting a boost. Hospital Quirónsalud Tenerife has just added a new, cutting-edge hyperbaric chamber. This new technology will help patients with complex recoveries, hard-to-heal injuries, and those needing tissue repair. It also opens up new possibilities for sports recovery.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a medical treatment where patients breathe pure oxygen in a special pressurized room. This helps increase the amount of oxygen in their body tissues. More oxygen helps the body's natural healing processes, especially for injuries that are slow to heal or very complicated. Dr. Óscar Blásco Amato, an Internal Medicine specialist at the hospital, emphasized how important this new treatment is.

This therapy is particularly useful for treating long-lasting wounds and ulcers that are hard to heal, like those caused by poor circulation or diabetes. It also helps with bone infections that don't respond to other treatments, damage from radiation therapy (like tissue death and scarring), serious soft tissue infections, and traumatic injuries where blood flow is affected. Other conditions treated include damage that happens when blood flow returns after being cut off, slow bone healing, sudden hearing loss, and sudden vision loss due to a blocked retinal artery.

Patients receive treatment individually in the hyperbaric chamber. It's done under close medical supervision, with specific plans tailored to each patient's condition or goal. Each session lasts about 60 to 90 minutes. It's a painless, non-invasive treatment, and the pressure inside the chamber is carefully controlled. A specialist doctor decides how many sessions are needed after a thorough check-up. It's important to know that this therapy doesn't replace other treatments. Instead, it works alongside them – often combined with surgery, advanced wound care, rehabilitation, or antibiotics – to help patients recover better and faster.

Besides its medical uses, hyperbaric oxygen therapy is also becoming popular in sports, for both professional and amateur athletes. Athletes use it to speed up muscle recovery after tough training, reduce swelling after exercise, and lessen muscle soreness that appears a day or two later (DOMS). It also helps repair tiny injuries and supports the healing of muscle and tendon problems, tendinitis, ligament injuries, and recovery after surgery for athletes. Dr. Blasco points out that when used with physiotherapy and training programs, it can cut down recovery times and help athletes train more consistently.

Overall, hyperbaric oxygen therapy offers several benefits: it greatly increases oxygen in tissues, encourages new blood vessel growth, reduces swelling and inflammation, significantly improves healing, helps cells regenerate, aids in controlling serious infections, and speeds up recovery of normal body functions.

Adding this technology is part of Quirónsalud's plan to expand and improve its services in the Canary Islands. The group already has three hospitals there: in Tenerife, Costa Adeje, and La Orotava. Their healthcare network also includes nine medical centers spread across the island in places like Tenerife, Candelaria, Los Cristianos, La Laguna, Realejos, Icod, Puerto de La Cruz, Santa Úrsula, and Tejina.