What is the best HBOT protocol for children with Traumatic Brain Injury or Cerebral Palsy?
Forty treatments has become the recommended number for the initial series. While there is often noticable improvement after 20 treatments, permanence may not set in until there have been 30 to 35 treatments at 1.5 ATA. This block of treatments is usually delivered once a day. There should be at least a 4 week break at 40 treatments to give any effect of too much oxygen or physical fatigue time to wear off. We do not, as a rule, suggest brain injured patients receive more than one treatment per day unless this is an acute TBI. Pushing the chronically injured brain too fast causes metabolic fatique and one can lose ground instead of gaining ground. In chronic brain injury, a second block of 40 treatments is usually indicated. Beyond 80 treatments the protocol is more empirical, like with any drug (and HBOT is a drug), the dosing is dictated by response and drug dosage must be individualized. Every patient is treated as an indiviual, so nothing is written in stone regarding pressure withi
