Hard Shell vs. Soft Shell Hyperbaric Therapy: What You Need to Know

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is not a new treatment — it was first used in 1662 — but it’s becoming a treatment of choice for many tough medical conditions, including diabetic foot ulcers, skin and bone infections, and burns.

As it becomes a more popular treatment option, some practices are offering the therapy in equipment that isn’t up to the task. More specifically, we’re talking about the difference between hard shell hyperbaric chambers and soft shell chambers.

This month, Dr. Leon Tio and the team at Clover Oxygen Hyperbarics and Wound Center discuss what you should know about hard shell vs. soft shell hyperbaric therapy.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy basics

Let’s start with some basic information about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. At its core, this is a therapy in which we deliver 100% oxygen into your tissues using a pressurized chamber. For reference, the air around you contains about 21% oxygen.

The pure oxygen provides invaluable resources that help the body to heal. To give you an idea, the FDA has cleared hyperbaric oxygen therapy for 14 conditions, including:

• Air and gas bubbles in blood vessels
• Severe anemia
• Burns
• Carbon monoxide poisoning
• Crush injury
• Decompression sickness
• Gas gangrene
• Sudden hearing loss 
• Severe skin and bone infections 
• Radiation injury
• Skin graft flap at risk of tissue death
• Sudden vision loss
• Non-healing wounds and diabetic foot ulcers

We’ve expanded the use of this therapy to include chronic fatigue syndrome, brain health, and sports medicine.

Not all hyperbaric chambers are the same

Because getting oxygen deep into your tissues is the goal of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, you want one that excels at the task. This is why we only use a hard shell chamber at Clover Oxygen Hyperbarics and Wound Center.

As the name suggests, hard shell hyperbaric oxygen chambers are made from hard metals and plastics that we can seal off and pressurize properly. Inside these chambers, we can deliver 100% pure medical grade oxygen at a pressure that measures 2.0 ATA (absolute atmosphere) or higher. This pressure allows us to push oxygen deep into your tissues, even reaching bone.

In recent years, soft shell chambers are being marketed for the same purposes, but this equipment falls short in some significant ways.

Soft shell chambers — originally designed to be portable and to treat altitude sickness and decompression sickness — are made from nylon materials that rely on a zipper for closing, so they don’t seal like hard shell chambers do. This also means that soft shell chambers can’t pressurize the way hard shell ones can; soft shell hyperbaric chambers can only achieve 1.4 ATA, and they often measure less.

In response to soft shell hyperbaric chambers being marketed for medical use, the FDA has emphasized that they’re only cleared for altitude sickness treatment.

Know the benefits of hard shell hyperbaric therapy

In addition to hard shell chambers being far more effective than soft shell chambers, they’re also safer and cleaner. If you want to reap the full benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, we urge you to seek treatment with hard shell chambers like the ones that we use.

If you have more questions about hyperbaric oxygen therapy or about the differences in chambers, we’re happy to provide answers. To get started, please contact Clover Oxygen Hyperbarics and Wound Center in Aledo, Texas, today.