BYU student with severe frostbite treated in hyperbaric chamber


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PROVO — Freshman BYU student Marty Smithson hiked up Y Mountain with friends a month ago wearing only shorts, running shoes and a hoodie. The “quick trip” soon turned into a longer hike and he got into trouble.

“They said there was going to be a cool picture spot so I kept going,” said Smithson, who is from Florida and not used to colder climates. “The snow started getting a little deeper and I felt like I needed to turn around. It was getting close to nighttime.”

His feet and legs were frozen. As he walked in the knee-deep snow, his injuries became more severe, though he couldn’t feel it.

“It was icy; every step it was breaking away at my shins. Sometimes I’d get stuck up to my thigh,” he said. “My feet were so cold my left shoe came off and I didn’t even feel it come off. I hiked two miles without my left shoe.”

His friends carried him on the last mile of the hike. When he got to the emergency room at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, doctors first worried that he might lose his foot. Then the focus turned to saving his toes.

“As bad as those shins looked, I was more concerned with his toes. There’s not a real remarkable change in the first few hours after frostbite, so they looked fairly benign, fairly normal,” said Dr. Marc Robins of Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. “There was a purple discoloration and no blood flow. It looked like what we call stage 3 frostbite.”

Robins immediately got him into a hyperbaric chamber, not a common treatment for the ailment, but it worked. The intense oxygen, along with blood thinners, saved his toes.

“You’re breathing 100 percent oxygen under pressure, under increased atmospheric pressure, which means we can bypass the blood vessels, basically, and get oxygen delivered almost directly to the tissue,” he said.

Doctors said Smithson is very fortunate that he sought treatment right away. That’s why he’s expected to make a full recovery, though his toes will be more susceptible to frostbite in the future. They treated him twice a day for a week in the chamber until his body was able to kick in and heal on its own.

In the meantime, Smithson said he learned his lesson the hard way. Next time he goes on a hike like that he plans on wearing double layers of everything: pants, shirt, coat, with warm boots on his feet, “for sure,” he said.

“Hardest hike of my life,” he said. “On the way up I actually joked, ‘Ah guys I’m going to get frostbite we should turn around. My feet are freezing.’ I didn’t think that’s what would actually happen.”

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