Medical expert weighs in on hyperbaric chamber safety

The Brief

• A 5-year-old child was killed in an explosion at a medical center in Troy.

• Officials say the machine that exploded was a hyperbaric chamber.

• Medical experts say hyperbaric chambers are safe and incidents are rare.

TROY, Mich. (FOX 2) – A community is heartbroken on Friday after a 5-year-old child was killed in an explosion at a medical center in Troy. Meanwhile, medical experts are saying it’s rare for an incident like this to occur with these machines.

What we know

On Friday morning, units from the Troy fire and police departments responded to 165 Kirts Blvd in Troy around 8 a.m. following reports of an explosion.

A 5-year-old boy was killed after a hyperbaric chamber blew up inside the building. His mom, who was next to the chamber at the time, also suffered injuries to her arms.

The child was a resident of Royal Oak.

The machine is used to treat strokes, cancer, autism, and more.

What they’re saying

Doctor Christian Bogner is familiar with hyperbaric chambers as he was a former medical director for the Oxford Center.

“The time I was there for three and a half years, this was the strictest procedure. It was like at an airport. Every step was checked,” he said.

Bogner says those machines are inspected often and patients cannot bring anything into the chamber, even having to wear special outfits.

“And change into 100% cotton, you don’t want any synthetic fibers, anything with a spark risk, because we’re operating at 100% oxygen, which is very flammable,” he said.

What is a hyperbaric chamber?

Dig deeper

A hyperbaric chamber is a pressurized room or container that has 100% oxygen inside.

According to the Mayo Clinic, patients undergoing hyperbaric oxygen therapy use it to treat a condition called decompression sickness, which occurs due to rapid drops in the surrounding pressure.

The goal is to get more oxygen to tissue in the body that’s been damaged by disease or injury.

In a hyperbaric chamber, the air pressure is increased two to three times higher than normal air pressure. That way, the lungs can receive more oxygen, which can enhance new growth of blood vessels and boost one’s immune system.

Because the chamber is pressurized, it can become highly combustible.

Meanwhile, there have only been four incidents throughout the world since 1996.

The backstory

This tragedy is not the first time the Oxford Center has been under scrutiny, as a former employee at the facility, Casey Diskin, was just sentenced to four to seven years in prison, accused of stealing medical credentials and abusing children with autism.

The Oxford Center provided a statement reading in part:

“The safety and wellbeing of the children we serve is our highest priority. Nothing like this has happened in our more than 15 years of providing this type of therapy.”

What’s next

Police only had preliminary information and did not know what was the cause of the explosion.

It’s also unclear what the child was being treated for a while in the chamber.

Officials are still working to confirm what accreditation the center had and whether it was allowed to operate a hyperbaric chamber.

The Source

FOX 2 talked with Doctor Christian Bogner and used information from Troy police.