Radiation therapy saves countless lives, but it can leave a lasting legacy: months or years later, some survivors develop chronic tissue damage in the areas that were treated — painful, slow-healing injuries to bone, bladder, or bowel that standard care struggles to fix.
As cancer survival improves and more people live long after treatment, managing these late effects becomes an increasingly important quality-of-life issue.
This review, published in a leading cancer journal, is significant for clarifying where HBOT genuinely helps. The strongest evidence was for jawbone damage after head-and-neck radiation (osteoradionecrosis), radiation cystitis (bladder), and radiation proctitis (rectum), where HBOT — typically delivered at 2.0–2.5 ATA for 90–120 minutes, daily, 5 times a week — can promote healing and improve quality of life.
For survivors living with these hard-to-treat injuries, it is a well-supported option worth raising with their oncology team. <view study>