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PROVO — Eric Anderson is pretty proud of his Nike swoosh-looking scar.
"I had squamous cell carcinoma on my leg right on my shin, just off the bone, from years and years, my whole life living in shorts," said Anderson.
He tried radiation, he said because it has a 98 percent success rate, but he fell into the 2 percent and received a wound that would not heal.
Doctors suggested he try the hyperbaric chamber, which can treat many conditions that involve oxygen-starved tissue. "I feel I was able to save my leg because of this," Anderson said.
The eight-person hyperbaric chamber at Intermountain's Utah Valley Hospital kind of looks like a submarine. Dr. Marc Robins, M.D. Utah Valley Hyperbaric and Wound Car Center Medical Director, said " That's the old Navy concept. These are original Navy chambers that were used for compression sickness."
Each treatment is called a dive and lasts about an hour and a half. Technicians take them down to the equivalent of 45 feet in seawater. Most people take up to 40 dives in about two month's time.
Looking at his scar and the results, Anderson said, "It was pretty exhilarating, really! I've never experienced anything like that."
Patients wear full diver's masks that seal around their neck so they're breathing 100 percent oxygen.
"Oxygen is required by the body in order to initiate new sequences towards healings, in other words, your DNA is signaled to turn on by oxygen," Robins said.
It actually produces healing you can see and track. "You could see the capillary growth going up to my wound, and it was amazing," Anderson said.
Another hyperbaric chamber user, Barbara Allen, said, "They just wanted to amputate because it was so bad," she continued, "Thank goodness for the people here at the wound clinic and hyperbaric chamber because they said we're not even close to that."
Allen slipped and fell on the ice last year. After surgery on her ankle, the wound never closed. Allen kept very good track of her progress with pictures and noticed a difference after a week of treatment. "I'm not back to walking, I'm not back to being me. ... But every day I look down and think, it's still here," Allen said.
"If you can save a limb you've really improved their quality of life," Robins said.
