To battle her son’s autism, Kazuko Curtin did more than look into a treatment — she started a clinic for it.
Twelve years ago, Curtin was told by doctors that her son had autism. In subsequent years, while attending conferences, she heard about treatment in a hyperbaric chamber, where pressure is increased in an attempt to boost the amount of oxygen in the child’s brain.
Curtin bought a machine, and today a hyperbaric chamber is one of the treatments offered by the CARE Clinics in Austin, Texas, and Tampa, Fla., which she opened last year.
“Hyperbaric is very useful,” said Curtin. “You never think autistic children are going to stay inside the hyperbaric for 90 minutes, because they are very restless. What’s amazing — they like it! For some reason, they are very calm inside.”
Curtin is the not the first to use hyperbaric therapy, a procedure with little scientific backing for the treatment of autism. But a new, small study of 56 children treated at several small clinics may change that if the findings can be replicated.
“We wanted to do a formal study that looked to see if this was even a valid treatment,” said Dr. Daniel A. Rossignol of the International Child Development Resource Center in Melbourne, Fla., and the study’s lead author. “We hoped to stimulate more research.”
Above information was cited from an article by ABC News
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