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Hyperbaric oxygen chamber saves young girl's nose after dog bite

It took surgeons 3 hours to reattach it.

BATON ROUGE, La. — It was a race against time to save a little girl's nose after a dog bite.

Now, a Baton Rouge doctor and mother, she is hoping her daughter's remarkable health story will help parents and doctors understand the value of the treatment she had to find on her own.

Three months ago, five-year-old Lucy Nadler was playing with her sister at her uncle's house. His docile Labrador nipped at her face, and took off part of her nose.

“Luckily, they thought to look for her nose on the floor, and luckily they found it, and they put it in a glass of ice, and we transported it to Children's Hospital,” said Dr. Jen Erbil a Baton Rouge Rheumatologist, who is Lucy’s mother.  

In the O.R. for three hours, surgeons reattached it.

“And then we took her home with a near zero percent expected probability that that composite graft would survive, because it had no blood flow, and because this has never really historically ever been reported,” Dr. Erbil said.

By the next day, it began to die. Lucy's mother, Dr. Jen Erbil, is a rheumatologist in Baton Rouge and asked physician colleagues for advice. Many said there was nothing that could be done. Lucy would need months, maybe years of reconstruction from forehead skin later on, but a friend mentioned the hyberbaric oxygen chamber. Time was of the essence. She turned to Harch Hyperbarics in Metairie.

“The grafted tissue pinked up within about 20 minutes of hyperbarics.  We became very hopeful, and we could see it was getting blood flow,” she said.

Lucy went into the tank daily for a month, sometimes twice a day. Every three hours at home, Dr. Erbil used a home oxygen concentrator. 

“The hyperbaric treatment then not only oxygenates it, we're growing new blood vessels to the tissue, and that's what takes time. This is unprecedented. This has never been achieved,” said Dr. Paul Harch, owner of Harch Hyperbarics.

Dr. Harch is also using hyperbarics to heal people who have gone through other types, whether it's medical or cosmetic surgery. For instance, in a face lift, he's found that it dramatically reduces the inflammation, increases blood flow, and patients heal much more quickly.

Lucy's scars will likely fade in a year. If not, she can get laser treatment to help. Now Dr. Erbil wants her fellow doctors to learn the value of hyperbaric oxygen.

“It's astonishing to me the benefits of hyperbaric medicine. As a physician, I was not aware of the role of hyperbarics. We are not taught this in medical school. This is severely underutilized,” stressed Dr. Erbil.

In medical cases such as this, as well as diabetes skin problems, insurance does pay for hyperbarics.

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