NEW ORLEANS — A 2-year-old girl has recovered from severe brain injury after nearly dying from a drowning incident at her Arkansas home last year.
CBS reports that on February 29, 2016, Eden Carlson fell into the family pool and remained submerged for fifteen minutes. Her heart had stopped beating, and though she was eventually revived, she had also sustained significant brain injury.
After the accident, the toddler lost muscle control and the ability to walk and speak. She would not respond to commands, and could only squirm and shake her head.
Doctors decided to wake up the girl's brain using oxygen, and started normobaric oxygen treatments, delivered at sea level pressure, twice a day for 45 minutes at a time.
The results were immediate. She stopped squirming, was able to move her arms and hands more, and partially regained her ability to speak and feed herself.
The girl was moved to a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber in New Orleans, where pure oxygen was administered at two to three times the pressure of a normal room.
Once absorbed into the bloodstream, the oxygen triggered tissue repair and reduced swelling in the brain. Just 40 sessions later, damage in the toddler's brain had been reversed almost completely.
But though miraculous, the little girl's case is but one case, and further studies are needed to determine whether the treatment would work for other patients.
