Oxygen chambers breathe life into new facility

With Wednesday’s arrival of two new oxygen chambers, the Bonita Springs Community Health Center is prepared to launch a new wound treatment center.

Photo by MICHEL FORTIER, Daily News

Ernest McClellan, Tom Boswell and Brad Johnson, foreground to background, push the last of two one-ton hyperbaric chambers into the Bonita Springs Community Health Center on Wednesday to be used as part of a new wound-healing center. The chambers will allow for advanced healing of wounds related to a variety of ailments, including soft tissue infections, radiation destruction, arterial disease and diabetic foot ulcers.

The Bonita Springs outpatient facility, jointly owned by Lee Memorial and Naples Community Hospital health care systems, will open a new wound healing center on June 26. The center will be the only one of its kind in south Lee County, said Michelle Zech, program director for NCH’s wound healing center.

The focus of the treatment facility will be two one-ton, $100,000 hyberbaric chambers. The center received its chambers from California on Wednesday and hopes to have them operational in July, Zech said.

The chambers will allow for advanced healing of wounds related to a variety of ailments, including soft tissue infections, radiation destruction, arterial disease and diabetic foot ulcers.

The chambers will benefit patients in the area who otherwise had to travel to Fort Myers or Naples to get special treatment, Zech said. Typical hyberbaric chamber treatment requires sessions five days a week for at least a month.

Zech estimates that 42 patients will be treated a year in the high-pressure chambers, which have been moved into a former surgical storage room.

Nurses are being trained to use the chambers at Ohio State University’s wound healing center, Zech said.

While the chambers will be the most visible healing tool of the center, that won’t be all it offers. The center will offer comprehensive care for outpatients, said Mike Riley, CEO of the Bonita Community Health Center.

“The (Bonita Community Health) Center offers a wide array of services,” Riley said. “This just adds to our level of outpatient services.”

The wound center will feature six physicians and two nurses, Zech said. On a typical day they would treat 15 to 18 patients.