Cerebral palsy patients dive into treatment

04-2006-19

Corey Hume can barely use his arms and legs and spends most of his time in a wheelchair.

Still, the second-grader from Maine Elementary School in Beavercreek rides horseback, plays soccer and swims as part of his therapy for cerebral palsy, a general term for a group of permanent brain injuries that affect an infant in the womb, during birth, or in the months following birth.

He also dives.

The 8-year-old son of Chris and Cara Hume of Beavercreek is one of five children so far to "dive" into a hyperbaric chamber at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Medical Center as part of a study to see if pure oxygen delivered in a pressurized chamber can improve motor functions in children with cerebral palsy.

"Hyperbaric oxygen has been used all over the world," said Dr. Daniel Lacey, a pediatric neurologist with Children's Medical Center who is leading the joint study with Wright State University's Boonshoft School of Medicine and Kettering Medical Center.

"Tens of thousands of kids have been put in these chambers mostly because traditional medicine doesn't have a whole lot to offer kids with cerebral palsy. Unfortunately, there have not been many good research studies to show that it works."

Cerebral palsy afflicts about two children out of every 1,000 born in the United States, according to CerebralPalsyFacts.com. Patients may have rigid muscles and limited motor skills, speech difficulties, learning disabilities and other problems.

How it works

It's called a dive, but no actual diving, as into a water tank, is involved. Instead, children seated in a chamber about the size of a hospital room wear a plastic hood over their heads. Each is tended to by a nurse or health clinician. The atmospheric pressure inside the chamber is raised, mimicking the experience of scuba diving, and pure oxygen is delivered to the patient to stimulate damaged or dormant brain cells.

"These brain cells are sleeping or idling; they're not fully functional," Lacey said. "If you can get more oxygen deeper inside the brain, then you can awaken them. That's the hope and the theory."

The sessions last about an hour, five days a week for eight weeks. For comparison purposes, half of the children receive 100 percent oxygen; the other half receive the equivalent of room air, which is about 21 percent oxygen.

Researchers will look at each child's gross motor functions when the 40 treatments are completed and again three and six months after that.

If Lacey's study, scheduled to be completed in 2009, shows the therapy is effective, it could help convince insurance companies and the government to cover the cost, which averages about $100 per treatment, Lacey said. It could take up to 100 sessions to be effective, he said.

The treatments are free, however, to the families that participate in the study, thanks to a $1.77 million federal grant the hospitals landed with the help of U.S. Rep. Dave Hobson, R-Springfield.

But researchers still need more than 80 children to sign up, and they're looking for volunteers. The children must be 3 to 8 years old and have never received hyperbaric treatments.

Once the study is completed, the children who did not receive 100 percent oxygen will be invited back for treatment if the therapy is shown to be effective.

For the Humes and son Corey, the study was an opportunity they could not resist.

"I think it's worth the investment (of time). And for people in the Dayton area, it's never going to be any closer, it's not going to be any cheaper and it's probably not going to be any safer," Cara Hume said.

Source: http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0415hyperbaric2.shtml

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