Man, woman die after collapsing in spa decompression chamber

If done correctly by trained medical staff in a hospital setting, HBOT is considered safe. In order to prevent oxygen toxicity, some people may need to take short breaks during the therapy and breathe "normal" air to prevent tissues in the body from taking in too much oxygen.

The best way to avoid side effects and complications of HBOT is to be treated in a hospital setting with trained medical staff.

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/physical_medicine_and_rehabilitation/complications_of_hyperbaric_oxygen_treatment_134,148/

This happened at the spa Manainoyu Ooiten (真名井の湯、大井店).

Their decompression chamber, referred to as the Pascal Health Chamber (パスカル健康房) costs 300 yen for 45 minutes, as shown on their website: http://www.manainoyu.com/ooi/special.html

Surely the difference between 45 minutes and 50 minutes did not play a factor in their death?

TV news showed that the decompression chamber's cycle was supposed to be a 15-minute gradual decompression to the high-ish mountain pressure, 15 minutes at that pressure, then a 15-minute gradual return to normal pressure.

It appears as if some part of that cycle didn't work correctly. My money would be on a too-sudden return, but that's sheer speculation.

This is the first I'd heard of these facilities being used for therapeutic purposes rather than for divers.

If done correctly by trained medical staff in a hospital setting, HBOT is considered safe. In order to prevent oxygen toxicity, some people may need to take short breaks during the therapy and breathe "normal" air to prevent tissues in the body from taking in too much oxygen.

The best way to avoid side effects and complications of HBOT is to be treated in a hospital setting with trained medical staff.

@Slumdog, this wasn't a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and it wasn't hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). HBOT does the OPPOSITE of what this chamber was doing. HBOT increases the atmospheric pressure inside the chamber and feeds 100% oxygen into the chamber. That's why the risk of oxygen poisoning exists with HBOT and why it must be monitored by professionals. This machine was decreasing the pressure to a mountain altitude equivalent.

never heard of those stupid machine before. Not even an emergency button. Amazing low safety level.

I've heard of these machines but 3,500 meters... or 11,500 feet... for some people could be dangerous. Do they just let anybody in that wants to? A person might have a slight respiratory problem and not know it. Also... are the people being constantly monitored? Is there licensing involved, training and inspections of the machines themselves? Hopefully they're not just letting any company buy these .

I saw that contraption on the news and it didn't look safe at all. Personally, I would have never gotten inside that weird thing. Are there any relevant health benefits for going inside the decompression chamber besides spending a great deal of time deep underwater?

Slumdog, this wasn't a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and it wasn't hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). HBOT does the OPPOSITE of what this chamber was doing. fadamor,

Thank you for your post. It was a hyperbaric chamber which can be used either to raise or lower oxygen pressure, ie: decompression or recompression. In either case, a medical professional, preferably a physician, should be present. That was and still is my point. My post was edited to remove a comment to another poster and so my post became a little less clear.

These machines are serious business and there are many risk factors involved including whether the user has heart disease or not.

So were they "underpressurized" or "overpressurized"?

Can someone answer my question? What is the difference between a hyperbaric oxygen therapy and the decompression chamber used at this spa. Are they both non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical and are their any dangerous side effects. Also what are the benefits for your body and how much does it cost for a treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypobaric_chamber

A hypobaric chamber, or altitude chamber, is a chamber used during aerospace or high terrestrial altitude research or training to simulate the effects of high altitude on the human body, especially hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypobaria (low ambient air pressure). ... Hypobaric chambers are also finding increasing use as a means of improving athletic performance. Since the human body adapts to extended mild hypoxia by increasing the quantity of red cells in the blood and this raises aerobic performance, athletes sleep in them as part of their training regimen.

If the chamber worked as designed, then the simulated altitude wouldn't even be as high as the summit of Mt. Fuji. I would think anybody healthy enough to go up there should be healthy enough to used the chamber without medical monitoring. As was noted in the article, however, the chamber didn't work correctly. Perhaps it took them higher than 12,000 feet - which is considered the average point where hypoxia starts to become noticeably debilitating.

Were there any alcohol involved? Remember that alcohol causes dehydration, so if they were drinking earlier, they should've drank plenty of water prior to entering the spa chamber. Smart thing is to avoid the consumption of alcohol on the day of a treatment.

It's health spa equipment. Maybe no safety interlocks, or too few interlocks and interlocks failed. Maybe no internal release switch. Or couple fell asleep and didn't notice anything and so couldn't use the release. System like that should have multiple redundancy to prevent such failures.

"Pascal Health Cell" is probably named after the SI unit for pressure, pascal.