Irradiation treatment of cancer of the head and neck can cause permanently reduction in the blood supply to the mandibular and maxillary (jaw) bones increasing their risk for bone osteoradionecrosis. I had to deal with a potential risk of this problem after dental surgery. A recent review suggested that hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO) may be beneficial for this condition. Unfortunately, the available data are conflicting, and the benefit of HBO to prevent or treat osteoradionecrosis of the jaw in irradiated patients is uncertain. Because randomized trials have not been done, questions persist about the ultimate benefit of this approach. I have summarized the information on my Blog.
Despite the uncertainty about the utility of HBO it is commonly used because it is a relative safe procedure.

Itzhak Brook MD

There is alot of info already right here about hyperbaric oxygen treatments. Ive done 125 of these and am very familiar with HBO. Several other members have done HBO and are knowledgeable as well. There is a search function here on the forum and also on the main OCF pages.

Due to my cancer being in the maxilla I was at a higher risk of getting ORN. I did get treated with HBO treatments and they helped me. Not only with ORN but with my mouth sores. I was a year out of radiation treatment and was not healing. HBO helped all of that.

thanks for explaining about the search option. It is very helpful.

I was one of the unlucky ones that even had to have ear tubes inserted and still couldn't do the HBO. My ears couldn't hold pressure and you need at least to hold 20 lbs. Mine could do 2 lbs and after the tubes, an instant worse than a migrain headache. They stopped it.

Is there any way to work out how many rads of radiation you end up with at the end including all the x rays ect.? What is the danger level and is there anything you can to reduce the effects post treatment ?

Ask your Radiation Oncologist but for most of us we get appx 70 to 72 gys over the course of 6 to 7 weeks averaging appx 2 gys per session. This amount is about the lifetime maximum that one area can be hit with.

HBO is supposed to encouragw the growth of new blood vessels or get the old ones to reroute them selves and connect into healthy vessels. This is one thing I did learn at Pittsburgh. This is the main goal the Drs told me.