TY  - JOUR
A1  - P, Vera-Cruz 
A1  - C, Zagalo 
A1  - M, Dos Santos J.
A1  - P, Aguas A.
T1  - Chronic hyperbaric oxygen therapy causes only minor ultrastructural changes in the human nasal epithelium
JO  - Eur. J. Anat.
SN  - 1136-4890
Y1  - 2009
VL  - 13
SP  - 7
EP  - 10
UR  - http://www.eurjanat.com/web/paper.php?id=09010007
KW  - adult
KW  - aged
KW  - article
KW  - cell infiltration
KW  - clinical article
KW  - controlled study
KW  - epithelium cell
KW  - histopathology
KW  - human
KW  - hyperbaric oxygen
KW  - leukocyte
KW  - long term care
KW  - male
KW  - nasal biopsy
KW  - nose mucosa
KW  - oxygen breathing
KW  - oxygen saturation
KW  - tinnitus
KW  - transmission electron microscopy
KW  - turbinate
KW  - vascular disease
N2  - Hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy is becoming increasingly popular in the treatment of several pathologies, namely in vascular diseases. It is generally considered to be innocuous, with few restrictions. Thus, patients subjected to HBO therapy breath saturated oxygen at an elevated pressure. Since the respiratory mucosa comes into contact with this altered inhaled air, we decided to use light and electron microscopy to investigate whether chronic HBO therapy causes significant changes in the nasal mucosa. For this, we obtained biopsies of the anterior portion of the lower nasal turbinate from two groups of 9 individuals under direct visual inspection. The first group had a diagnosis of tinnitus and was subjected to 15 sessions of 100 min-long HBO treatments, and the latter group comprised healthy volunteers not subjected to HBO therapy. The samples were processed for light and electron microscopy. We found that the turbinate mucosa of the HBO-treated group showed a moderate infiltration by leukocytes and an increase in the thickness of the epithelial basement membrane. By transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we observed that only a minority of the nasal epithelial cells presented alterations due to the HBO treatment; these alterations were focal and restricted to cilia. We conclude that chronic HBO treatment induces only minor alterations in the nasal mucosa and that these are likely to be reversible when treatment is discontinued.
ER  -