Objective: Clinical hyperbaric oxygen therapy for various diseases is becoming increasingly popular today. Complication reports remain rare. In this paper, we would like to report our limited experience. 

Methods: Seven hundred and nine patients received hyperbaric oxygen therapy  with a total of 11259 treatments between August 2000 and August 2007. Patients aged from 3 to 90 years (mean, 50 years) with a male-to-female ratio of 1.7 to 1 (445 to 264). Each patient received 10 to 140 treatments with an average of 16 treatments per patient. The patients were followed for 1-60 months (mean, 3 months) after the HBOT. All patients had passed the hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) testing dose before the standard dose. The testing dose is 1.9 ATA for 35 minutes and the standard dose is 2.4 ATA for 120 minutes. Seventeen patients had ear membrane ventilation tube insertion. Nine patients were for intolerance of air pressure (9/17). Eight unclear patients were for prevention of barotraumas (8/17). Our chamber is a multi-place double hyperbaric chamber. The inner chamber can treat eight people and the outer chamber can receive two people at one time. The evaluations before hyperbaric oxygen therapy included: medical history, 2.vital signs, 3.eardrum examinations, 4 chest x-ray, 5.complete blood cell count and blood sugar.

Results: Six patients developed middle ear effusion (ten ears), two patients developed myopia, Two patient developed oxygen seizure and one patient developed mild oxygen toxicity during the chamber. Only the myopia patients needed glasses for correction of vision. One patient developed 3.0 diopters after 140 treatments. Another patient developed 1.7 diopters after 80 treatments. There were no other permanent complications for the other patients. There were no lethal complication in our HBOT under the condition of 2.4 ATA.