SAN MARCOS -- Two years after Pomerado Hospital's Center for Wound Care began offering hyperbaric treatments that push pure oxygen into the body, high demand for them has prompted Palomar Pomerado Health to open a second wound care center in this fast-growing community.

View A Video

Housed in the public hospital district's Center for Health Education on Craven Road, the new Center for Wound Care opened in July with two hyperbaric chambers and room for two more. The clear-acrylic, single-person chambers are in addition to three at Pomerado Hospital in Poway.

Dr. Brad Bailey, associate medical director of both wound-care centers, said the new one should eliminate the one- to two-week wait for patients trying to get hyperbaric treatments at Pomerado and make life easier for wound-care patients who live in San Marcos and other Highway 78 communities.

Population projections also suggest the demand for wound care, including hyperbaric treatments, will only rise in this area, he said.

"We expect a 140 percent increase by 2050 in the number of people aged 50 and up," he said. "With that, you (will) see a lot more patients being treated for chronic and nonhealing wounds."

Those most often occur in diabetics, whose circulation problems can cause foot and leg ulcers that get so bad the surrounding tissue dies, forcing doctors to amputate the limbs.

Patients suffering from delayed effects of radiation treatments, which kill cancerous tumors but also damage surrounding tissue and bone, and those with bed sores, bone infections, surgical openings, traumatic wounds or grafts that fail to heal properly are among the others commonly treated at the wound-care centers.

Bailey said compression therapy, growth factor therapies, bioengineered tissues and other treatments are used to help most patients at the centers, which bring numerous specialists and medical approaches together under one roof. The strategy means convenience for patients, who don't have to take time off work for multiple medical appointments, and a more-rounded treatment approach that takes things like nutrition and lifestyle into consideration, he said.

Hyperbaric treatments are part of the mix for about 10 percent of wound care patients, he said.

Long used for divers suffering from the "bends" because they surfaced too quickly, hyperbaric chambers surround a patient with 100 percent oxygen that is pressurized so it is pushed into the body where it floods the bloodstream and then body tissue. Describing the process as the opposite of what happens when a soda bottle is opened, Bailey said the result is a tenfold-increase in the concentration of oxygen in the body.

He said doctors began using the technique to help patients with problem wounds after numerous studies showed that the oxygen boost promoted healing by spurring damaged blood vessels and tissue to regenerate, increasing white blood cells' ability to fight infection, and carrying antibiotics into tissue that otherwise was not getting them.

Pomerado opened its wound care center in 1997 and installed two hyperbaric chambers there in 2005, after the hospital district teamed with Diversified Clinical Services. A former emergency room physician, Bailey is also the West Coast regional medical director for the company, which provides doctors and technicians who specialize in hyperbaric treatments.

Last year, the Poway hospital added a third chamber to its wound care center in an effort to keep up with the demand for hyperbaric treatments. Although a handful of other hospitals and health clinics have hyperbaric chambers, Palomar Pomerado wound-care centers are the only ones that offer single-patient units.

The center's chambers look like big clear tubes that open on one end so patients can be rolled inside on a gurney. The tubes are then sealed, and technicians adjust a series of dials that allow pressurized oxygen to slowly fill the chambers until the pressure is roughly 2 1/2 times that of normal atmospheric pressure.

Bailey said the pressure is equivalent to what a person would feel 42 feet to 44 feet below sea level. While they're inside the chambers, patients can sleep, watch TV or a movie, or use an intercom to talk with technicians.

A series of 20 to 40 two-hour treatments carried out five times a week are typical. Vista resident Tim Barrett, 58, started a series of hyperbaric treatments in late July, after radiation treatments for a tumor on his left ear left him with a gaping wound that refused to heal.

Coming out of his 10th hyperbaric treatment at the San Marcos Center for Wound Care recently, Barrett said he was pleased with the results so far.

"You can feel the pressure, but you just adapt to it and you get used to it," he said. "It's been very helpful. And it's non-invasive."

Although the treatments' $1,000-per-session price tag makes them fairly expensive, Ann Moore, systems director for wound care at Palomar Pomerado, said MediCare and most insurance companies cover the cost. The district will work with uninsured patients whose doctors prescribe the treatments, to help make them affordable, she said.

Contact staff writer Andrea Moss at (760) 739-6654 or amoss@nctimes.com.