What Researchers Did
Researchers looked at whether hyperbaric oxygen therapy, given alongside standard care, was linked to survival in hospitalized COVID-19 patients with severe low blood oxygen, during the period before COVID-19 vaccines were available.
What They Found
A retrospective study of 36 hospitalized COVID-19 patients who were eligible for hyperbaric oxygen therapy found that unadjusted death rates were lower in the treatment group (13%, 3 of 24) than in the group that did not receive treatment (50%, 6 of 12), a difference that reached statistical significance (p = 0.04). Patients who did not receive treatment were significantly older (p less than 0.01) and had worse baseline oxygen levels (p = 0.06). A survival analysis also showed a statistically significant reduction in death risk in the treatment group (hazard ratio 0.19, p = 0.02). However, after adjusting for age and baseline hypoxia, this difference was no longer statistically significant (hazard ratio 0.48, p = 0.42), meaning the unadjusted survival difference could be explained by these other differences between the groups rather than by the treatment itself.
What This Means for Canadian Patients
For patients with severe COVID-19 hypoxia, this study offered hyperbaric oxygen as an adjunct to standard care under an off-label, emergency-use framework, and an early unadjusted comparison showed fewer deaths in the treated group. That apparent benefit did not hold up once the authors accounted for age and baseline hypoxia differences between the groups, so the abstract does not support treating hyperbaric oxygen as a proven survival treatment for COVID-19 hypoxia.
Canadian Relevance
No direct Canadian connection identified.
Study Limitations
This was a small, non-randomized, retrospective study in which the unadjusted survival benefit was no longer statistically significant after adjusting for age and baseline hypoxia, limiting confidence that the treatment itself caused the observed difference in outcomes.