HCMC nears approval for hyperbaric chamber

For years, Hennepin County Medical Center officials have been eager to replace their aging hyperbaric chamber, used to treat a variety of conditions, from carbon monoxide poisoning to radiation injuries.

But it's not easy coming up with $10 million for a highly specialized piece of medical hardware that's so large it needs its own building.

"You don't go down and buy one of these things at the local home improvement store," County Commissioner Mark Stenglein quipped.

Now the County Board appears ready to provide the final piece of funding needed to ensure that HCMC will have a new hyperbaric chamber by 2012.

This week, the board was expected to approve $4.45 million in county bonding for the project, which has already received $5 million in state bonding this year and $400,000 in federal funding.

The total pricetag for the chamber and its new home is $9.85 million.

Hyperbaric chambers have unique emergency and healing functions. Patients receive pure oxygen under pressurized conditions, which helps with a range of ailments from carbon monoxide poisoning (accounting for 82 percent of emergency treatments) to wounds that refuse to heal and tissue that's damaged by radiation treatments.

The chamber "would be patient- and user-friendly," said Dr. Cheryl Adkinson, HCMC's director of hyperbaric medicine. "It won't look and feel so much like a submarine, and it will have all the updated computer technology and state-of-the-art support systems."

HCMC's new chamber will take a year to build, with an Australian engineering firm doing the work, and several more months to be installed at a new structure attached to the medical center's first floor at Park Avenue and S. 7th Street in Minneapolis. The proximity to the hospital will add convenience and a measure of comfort for patients, who typically have to use an ambulance to be transported three blocks from HCMC to the current chamber.

Until the new chamber is installed, Adkinson and her staff hope to maintain the current chamber in usable condition, which has become more difficult and costly to do in recent years.

Officials looked into overhauling the chamber, which dates from the 1960s, rather than buying a new one. But Adkinson said that would have cost more. Compressors and generators purchased to keep the current chamber going can be used with the new one, she said.

Recent statistics bear out the service provided by the chamber: An average of 218 individual patients treated each year, 105 of them on an emergency basis; about 3,200 annual treatment sessions; and patients who hail from all corners of Minnesota, as well as the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Iowa and Canada.

"This is a facility for all of Minnesota, and we want to continue to offer hyperbaric treatment for all conditions, regardless of how sick patients are or where they live," Adkinson said.