A five-year-old Michigan boy was killed last week while he was inside a hyperbaric chamber that exploded, killing him instantly.
CBS News reports that when emergency services responded to the accident on Friday at The Oxford Medical Centre, they found the boy – Thomas Cooper – dead inside the chamber.
His mother, who had also been in the room, suffered injuries to her arms, but one else was hurt in the explosion.
Police did not say what the child was being treated for and have not determined the cause of the explosion.
A hyperbaric chamber delivers pure oxygen to the body, with air pressure being increased to two to three times higher than normal.
Hyperbaric chambers can be used for life-saving, limb-saving, and tissue-saving treatments, as well as for other treatments, like low red blood cell counts caused by blood loss and sudden hearing loss from an unknown cause.
Because they contain such a high amount of oxygen in a pressurised space, they can be extremely combustible.
The centre said nothing like this had happened in its more than 15 years of providing this type of therapy.
An investigation is ongoing.
CBS News article – 5-year-old Michigan boy killed in hyperbaric chamber explosion (Open access)
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