Jimmy Fogata believes that oxygen saved his right foot.

The Santa Paula police sergeant suffered a fracture that became infected. A bright red wound reached from one side of his foot to the other. Doctors talked about amputation. Fogata thought that his 20-year career might be over.

"I don't think you can be a cop with a missing leg," he said.

He was slid into a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at St. John's Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo, the same device used to treat deep-sea divers with decompression sickness. A transparent tube was pressurized to a level equivalent to diving 44 feet underwater. It was filled with 100 percent oxygen, or about five times the natural environment.

Volume and pressure pushed the oxygen into Fogata's foot, creating new vessels to carry blood into the infected area. Outside the chamber, the wound was carefully and regularly treated with ointments and antibiotics.

"It healed me," said Fogata, who went into the chamber daily for 40 days. "If it wasn't for hyperbaric, I would probably be here with one leg."

St. John's Pleasant Valley is the county's only hospital with a hyperbaric oxygen and wound-healing center. The three, 8-foot-long chambers cost about $150,000 apiece and are made of plexiglass, acrylic and steel. Two of them bear names — Daisy and Scott — of hospital employees who have died.

The chambers are used for diving accidents, air or gas bubbles in the blood that can cause strokes, and, most of all, for wounds. Diabetics are treated for the ulcers that often emerge on their feet. Patients take hyperbaric dives for wounds related to cancer radiation treatment, skin grafts, bone infections and burns.

About four times a year, people come to the center with necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating disease. The pressurized oxygen works like a containment line around a wildfire, keeping the bacteria-driven disease from spreading.

"Concentration times pressure equals an incredible amount of oxygen," said Dr. John Tesman, the center's medical director, explaining how the oxygen creates new vessels that bring blood to wounds, reduces swelling and also helps bone heal.

Some people believe that hyperbaric oxygen can do much more.

At free-standing clinics, chambers are used in experimental and controversial treatments for autism, cerebral palsy and Parkinson's disease.

"In Asia and Europe, they're using it for about 60 to 80 different conditions," said Mike Bittner, director of the Hyperbaric Centers of California in Ventura, predicting that the U.S. will follow suit. "Folks will look at this as a front-line therapy rather than try everything else first. ... There will be one in every town."

Tesman said he hopes that the experimental treatments prove effective but worries the demand might be driven by desperate hopes for a cure.

Pleasant Valley's program focuses on healing wounds and other treatments approved by a national medical society. Hyperbaric chambers are used in tandem with ointments and medication designed to help wounds that won't heal.

One compound is made from a type of honey that fights bacteria. Another, called Regranex, costs about $700 for a toothpaste-sized tube and is often used to fight the kind of wounds caused by diabetes.

Tesman tells patients that the wound care and hyperbaric chambers can mean saving limbs that without treatment would likely be amputated.

"He said we're not here to cut off body parts; we're here to save them," Fogata said.

Patients are slid into the chamber on a padded gurney. They're told to clear their ears by swallowing or holding their noses. Then the pressure is ratcheted.

"I always refer to it as a soda bottle," Fogata said. "You put the lid on it, you shake it up and you feel the pressure in there."

Safety measures are taken because pure oxygen is highly flammable. Patients can't wear cell phones, watches, hair gel, nail polish or their own clothes.

"They are not even able to bring a book in because even turning a page can create a spark," Tesman said.

Out of every 20 patients plugged into the tube, one or two feels claustrophobic. They're given Xanax or other medication. Most people pass the time using the small color television inside the tube and watching videos from a library that ranges from "Hannibal" to "Return of the Jedi."

There is such thing as too much oxygen. In the middle of the about two-hour treatment, patients use a mask to breathe normal room air for five minutes.

On busy days, 15 people can be treated in the chambers. But on some days, there are as few as three people taking dives.

"I think it's because the patients aren't aware we're here, and many of the doctors aren't aware as well," Tesman said.