TAMPA, Fla. — The University of South Florida is embarking on a study to see whether hyperbaric pressure will alleviate mild to moderate traumatic brain injuries.

What You Need To Know

  • USF has completed construction on its new hyperbaric chamber facility

  • The facility will be used for a double-blind study to test the effectiveness of hyperbaric medicine's treatment for mild to moderate traumatic brain injuries

  • The study will last several years and is seeking 400 or more veterans to participate

  • If you're interested in being part of the study, click here

It’s research that will hopefully help hundreds of veterans in and around Florida.

Blowing up a glove like a balloon may seem like a party planner’s idea of decorations, but Dr. Joseph Dituri is doing it to show what happens in this massive contraption.

“We have two similar sized gloves blown up,” Dituri said. “And what we’re going to do is, we’re going to increase the pressure inside the chambers.”

The chambers Dituri refers to are hyperbaric chambers, which essentially increase pressure inside their tubes while oxygen flows through.

The gloves are here to show what adding pressure does inside the tube.

“You increase that pressure,” he said. “You decrease that volume and that’s why hyperbaric oxygen works.”

But this contraption is not just to decrease air inside a glove. It’s here to figure out if hyperbaric chambers will help people with mild to moderate traumatic brain injuries.

This has been a passion project for Dituri for years.

So much so that he spent 100 days underwater down in the Florida Keys to see what that kind of pressure does to a person.

The results there showed improvements to most of his vital signs and gave a template on whether this study should be pursued.

“We’ve been on the track of using this or trying to use hyperbaric medicine to increase blood flow for about 12 years now,” he said.

In June, about a year after Dituri came back above sea level, he showed us the hyperbaric facility at USF as it was being built.

There were signs of progress but still quite a way to go.

Now, the chambers are in and he’s closer than ever to welcome patients to participate in this study.

“We’re at the point where we have six functioning chambers and we’re ready to rock and roll,” Dituri said.

This study will be focused on veterans.

Dituri says over the next five years, they plan on having about 400 or so veterans participate in this double-blind study by having them sit in these tubes with the pressure being turned up to see how it affects them.

“The comfortable they get to sit here and look at the TV at the right angle, and they get to be able to watch their favorite, catch up on their favorite Netflix show,” Dituri said.

USF received two $14-million grants from the Florida legislature to help build and create this facility.

Being a veteran himself, it’s important for Dituri to not only treat veterans, but to have a team of veterans working here.

“The people that are wheeling you in and out of this thing know best what you’ve been through, because we’ve been through the same thing,” he said.

That relatability is what he says will make participants comfortable as they blaze a trail in determining what hyperbaric medicine can do.

It’s only a matter of time before the glove balloons come down and the real work begins.

USF held the facility’s grand opening on Sept. 30.

If you are a veteran with a mild to moderate traumatic brain injury who might want to participate in this study, click here.