Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy - Hyperbaric Chamber Information ...

Summary
There are conflicting results about the survival benefit afforded by exposure to HBOT in
conjunction with radiotherapy for bladder cancer. The lack of methodological rigour, the
variations in protocols, and inadequate descriptions of populations make it difficult to
arrive at a global assessment of effectiveness.
Lymphomas
The study by Pan et al 118 examined the effect of adjunctive HBOT on patients with
lymphoma receiving chemotherapy. The study was conducted in China and enrolled 41
patients with clinically diagnosed lymphoma. The authors did not differentiate between
Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Using an alternation scheme, patients were
assigned to HBOT (20 patients exposed to 2.5 ATA for two hours once a day for 14
days in an unstated chamber) or air (n = 21). All patients received courses of adriamycin,
bleomycin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine and dexamethasone. The report did not
discuss masking or follow-up procedures.
The authors examined the following end-points: reduction in tumour area (the product
of the tumour’s largest horizontal and vertical diameters), complete remission time (the
length of time from initiation of therapy to disappearance of the tumour), complete
remission rate (undefined, but evidently the proportion of tumours that undergo
complete remission), complete remission duration (the length of time from complete
remission to recurrence or censoring), and survival duration (the length of time from
diagnosis of the disease to death or censoring). The authors also looked at decreases in
haematologic measures (haemoglobin, white blood cells, platelets) and bone marrow
(proliferous degree, division index, megakaryocytes, granulocytes, nucleated
erythrocytes). No description of the methods used to determine these outcomes were
given.
The authors report statistically significant differences between intervention and
comparison groups in terms of reductions in tumour area, complete remission time, rate,
and duration, survival duration, and decreases in the haematologic and bone marrow
measures except for haemoglobin and megakaryocytes (Table 76).
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy 75