fourleg.com

Hi Laurie!

I hope you are doing well!

I have a question regarding hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I've had a few patients come through my door after HBOT whose owners have reported improvement after FCE or strokes.

Here's my question(s):
1.) What studies are there for using/recommending HBOT in spinal cord injury/disease, in dogs (or people if there are none on dogs) with HBOT? I'm having trouble finding any studies with a quick google search other than this one:
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy of spinal cord injury:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5510295/

and 2.) would you recommend trying it in a 5 year old Yorkie that is 8 months post-op back surgery? The dog was acutely paralyzed in the hind limbs after a disc rupture and had surgery within 24 hours but had already lost deep pain at that time. The dog now has the beginnings of spinal walking. From what I can tell in the above study HBOT would be best in an acute situation but I'm not sure it's good use of the owner's money at this stage.

Just wondering your thoughts on it since I'm not coming up with much after I promised my client I would investigate it further.

SJ

Hey S,

In my searches, I can’t find anything to justify HBOT in chronic SpC Injury patients. And to be honest, it doesn’t make sense that it would.

The paper you found was also the most comprehensive that I found from my search as well. The mechanism of helping seems really to be with an acute injury, or wounds (which can be chronic). The pathophysiology of a SCI doesn’t let itself to a reversal at a late stage: Apoptosis has already occurred, glial scarring has occurred, oxidative stressors have occurred, edema & inflammation are already gone, angiogenesis won’t matter. All in all is appears to be ’neuroprotective’… but not neuroregenerative.

So, I would council you owners to save their money. Work on the spinal walking to see if it can become functional.

Cheers,

Laurie

Thank you for confirming what my search discovered- no reason to pursue it. We’ll focus on spinal walking.

S.