The Equine Hyperbaric Center of South Florida brings oxygen therapy to the Palm Beaches. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) can give horses their best chance of healing and recovering from a variety of injuries and diseases. Oxygen Therapy works best in conjunction with accurate diagnoses and appropriate primary therapy. HBOT can be a powerful adjunct to other forms of therapy when severe, difficult or refractory disease processes are present. Hyperbaric medicine can decrease the recovery time or length of healing, and increase the chances of returning a horse to full work and health. One of the amazing principles behind HBOT is that hyper-oxygenation reduces swelling. In addition, enhanced delivery of oxygen to injured and hypoxic tissues normalizes deranged metabolism. Yet another extremely important effect of HBOT is it's enhancement of antimicrobial action via improved white blood cell function. This means HBOT can effectively enhance more conventional antimicrobial therapy of serious crippling and life-threatening infections. Oxygen is introduced as the chamber becomes pressurized, causing a very high saturation of oxygen in blood and plasma. Treatments last about an hour and are repeated depending upon the diagnosis, according to established protocols. Our chamber is one of the largest equine chambers manufactured and is roughly the size of a normal stall. Horses usually enter the chamber willingly, relax, and explore at liberty once there. Young or fractious horses are sedated and allowed to move about the chamber freely during treatment. Animals do not wear a mask, they just breath in the oxygen as they would regular air. They can begin to feel better and more relaxed during treatment.
