**6.4 Hyperbaric oxygen**

Although hyperbaric oxygen treatment for narcotising soft-tissue infections has not always been successful, the treatment has been found to be beneficial for a variety of conditions including amputations, [80] osteoradionecrosis, [81, 82] surgical flaps, and skin grafts [81, 83, 84]. However, studies have failed to statistically corroborate significant outcomes regarding differences with respect to mortality rates and length of hospitalisation [82, 85–88]. Benefits are suspected to primarily originate from the benefits of the increased nitric oxide levels that are developed by increasing oxygen pressure as nitric oxide is known to be vital for wound-healing [88].

Fascinatingly, in a study using an ischemic rabbit ear model, hyperbaric oxygen therapy was used in combination with PDGF or TGF-β1 and was found to have a synergistic effect that completely reversed the healing issues caused by ischemia [89].
