What Researchers Did
Doctors looked back at records of 91 intensive care patients treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy for a severe flesh-eating infection, to see how well current treatment approaches worked.
What They Found
This is a retrospective study of 91 intensive care patients treated for necrotizing soft tissue infection with hyperbaric oxygen therapy between 2008 and mid-2017, and the abstract reports no mortality, complication, or outcome figures. The authors state that evidence for hyperbaric oxygen therapy in this condition is, in their words, "limited to positive experiences in case studies and physiological benefits in animal studies," and that the therapy is "not yet fully established." The study describes its aims and methods (examining mortality, complications, ICU time, and functional limitations, and evaluating therapy relevance and management) but the abstract does not report the results of these analyses.
Canadian Relevance
No direct Canadian connection identified.
Study Limitations
This is a retrospective, single-center analysis described here only in terms of its aims and methods, with no comparison group and no results reported in the abstract, so no conclusions about treatment effectiveness can be drawn from it.