You Hit Your Head as a Kid. 24 Years Later, HBOT Still Improved Your Brain.

This article is part of the HBOT Radar series, where we summarize the latest published hyperbaric oxygen therapy research.

Fresh Science, Clearly Explained — Brought to you by Brain Spa Hyperbaric

Disclaimer: This article is intended for educational and informational purposes only. It summarizes published medical research conducted in clinical settings and does not evaluate Brain Spa Hyperbaric products. The hyperbaric chambers offered on this website are non-medical wellness devices and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Do not make medical decisions based on this article — consult a qualified healthcare professional.

📌 You Hit Your Head as a Kid. 24 Years Later, HBOT Still Improved Your Brain.

🔍 What this study explored

Here's something most people don't know: when a child gets a concussion, the effects can quietly follow them for decades. Not the headache — that passes. But subtle cognitive deficits — problems with memory, attention, processing speed, executive function — can persist into adulthood without ever being diagnosed.

Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of pediatric emergency visits, affecting an estimated 150 to 400 children per 100,000 every year. Most are classified as "mild" — and most recover. But somewhere between 10% and 30% develop persistent post-concussion syndrome (PCS), a condition characterized by long-term cognitive, emotional, and behavioral symptoms that can interfere with school, work, and social functioning for years.

The problem? These children often grow into adults who struggle with concentration, memory, or mental clarity — and nobody connects it back to the bicycle accident when they were seven or the football collision at thirteen. The condition remains, in the researchers' own words, "significantly underdiagnosed and undertreated."

So a team at the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research in Israel asked a question nobody had asked before: if an adult is still suffering cognitive consequences from a childhood brain injury — even 20 or 30 years later — can HBOT still help?

🌬️ HBOT protocol used in this study

• Design: Retrospective cohort study of patients treated between 2017 and 2024
• Patients: 26 adults (mean age 31.7 years) who sustained TBI in childhood (mean age at injury: 7.7 years)
• Average time since injury: 23.6 years — nearly a quarter century between the concussion and the treatment
• Protocol: At least 40 HBOT sessions, 5 times per week. Each session: 90 minutes of 100% oxygen at 2 ATA, with 5-minute air breaks every 20 minutes
• Cognitive testing: Computerized NeuroTrax battery before and after treatment — measuring memory (verbal and non-verbal), executive function, attention, information processing speed, and motor skills. Scores normalized to IQ-like scale (mean 100, SD 15)
• TBI severity: Mixed — both mild (concussion) and moderate-to-severe included

This study was conducted in a clinical hospital setting under medical supervision. Results from clinical research cannot be directly applied to other settings or devices — always consult a healthcare professional.

📊 Key findings

Five out of six cognitive domains improved significantly

After at least 40 HBOT sessions, patients showed statistically significant improvements in:

• Global cognition (p < 0.05)
• Memory (p < 0.05)
• Executive function (p < 0.05)
• Attention (p < 0.05)
• Information processing speed (p < 0.05)

The only domain that didn't improve significantly was motor skills.

The effect sizes were large — r = 0.62 to 0.78 (Wilcoxon signed-rank test). In research terms, anything above 0.5 is considered a large effect. These are substantial, clinically meaningful improvements, not marginal statistical blips.

Time since injury didn't matter

This is perhaps the most striking finding. The average participant was treated 23.6 years after their childhood injury — and the improvements were independent of how long ago the injury occurred. Whether it had been 15 years or 30+ years, the brain still responded.

This challenges a widely held assumption that neuroplasticity has a finite window. The data suggest that even decades-old brain damage may retain some capacity for repair given the right conditions.

"Mild" TBI showed the same impairment — and the same response

Another important finding: adults whose childhood injuries had been classified as "mild" (simple concussions) showed similar levels of cognitive impairment as those with moderate-to-severe TBI — and responded equally well to HBOT.

This underscores a point that concussion researchers have been making for years: "mild" refers to the initial injury severity, not to the long-term consequences. A "mild" concussion at age 8 can produce cognitive deficits that persist at age 35.

🧠 Why this study matters

The narrative power here is unmistakable. This is a study about people who got hurt as children, grew up with invisible cognitive problems, and decades later found improvement through a treatment that many assumed would be too late to help.

For the estimated hundreds of thousands of adults worldwide who are living with undiagnosed consequences of childhood concussions, this study opens a conversation that hasn't happened before.

The honest caveats:

• Retrospective, no control group. Without a sham or untreated control group, we can't definitively attribute the improvements to HBOT alone. Placebo effect, test-retest learning, and natural variation could contribute — although the researchers used different test versions to minimize practice effects, and prior RCTs from this group showed stable scores in untreated controls.
• 26 patients is small. Enough to detect large effects, but not enough to be definitive. A randomized controlled trial is needed.
• Sagol Center / Efrati group. This is one of the world's most prolific HBOT research groups and is commercially connected to HBOT provision through the AVIV Scientific clinics. Their research is consistently high-quality and peer-reviewed, but the commercial interest warrants transparency. The study was reviewed by Dominic D'Agostino (University of South Florida) and Enrico Camporesi (USF Health).
• Selection bias. This is a retrospective analysis of patients who specifically sought HBOT treatment. They may not be representative of all adults with childhood PCS.
• The protocol (2 ATA, 100% O₂, 40+ sessions) is intensive. The clinical and financial commitment is significant — this isn't a quick fix.

Despite these limitations, the large effect sizes across five cognitive domains, the independence from time since injury, and the equal response in "mild" and more severe TBI patients make this a genuinely compelling signal.

📌 Takeaway for the community

• 26 adults treated with HBOT an average of 24 years after childhood brain injury showed significant improvements in 5 of 6 cognitive domains — with large effect sizes (r = 0.62–0.78)
• The time since injury didn't affect outcomes — whether 15 or 30+ years, the brain still responded to HBOT
• Adults with "mild" childhood concussions were just as impaired and responded just as well as those with more severe injuries — "mild" doesn't mean "no lasting consequences"
• Without a control group, the results are promising but not definitive — a randomized controlled trial is needed to confirm causality
• This study was conducted at the Sagol Center (Shamir Medical Center, Israel) at 2 ATA with 100% oxygen — results cannot be directly applied to other settings or devices

Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2025.1641033/full

Shabi Shlifer A, Suzin G, Shorer R, Lang E, Finci S, Elman-Shina K, Doenyas-Barak K, Efrati S. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy improves post-concussion symptoms in adults with childhood traumatic brain injury: a retrospective cohort study. Front Neurol. 2025 Sep 3;16:1641033. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1641033.

Educational disclaimer

This content summarizes findings from published medical research for educational purposes only.

The hyperbaric chambers sold on this website are non-medical wellness devices and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

The studies discussed here were conducted in clinical medical settings using medical-grade interventions. The inclusion of research summaries does not imply that similar outcomes can be achieved using non-medical wellness devices.