What Researchers Did
Researchers followed patients with long-term bladder inflammation caused by past pelvic radiotherapy for 5 years to see whether symptom relief from hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) was maintained over time.
What They Found
This open-label, multicentre, phase 2-3 randomised trial followed 70 patients who had received HBO2 for chronic radiation-induced cystitis and found that improvement in urinary symptoms, measured on the EPIC urinary scale, was sustained 5 years after treatment. The mean EPIC urinary score rose 18.0 points (95% CI 14.2 to 21.8) from a baseline of 46.6 to 64.6 at 6 months, and remained similarly improved at 19.1 points (95% CI 13.3 to 24.9) at 5 years. Among the 48 patients classified as responders (68.6%), the mean increase was maintained at 22.9 points (95% CI 16.2 to 29.6, p less than 0.0001) at 5 years, while the 22 non-responders (31.4%) had shown no early improvement at 6 months (43.5 to 44.6). Nine of the 70 patients (12.8%) received additional HBO2 for recurring symptoms during follow-up.
What This Means for Canadian Patients
For patients with chronic bladder symptoms after pelvic radiotherapy, this suggests symptom relief from HBO2 can persist for years rather than fading once treatment ends, though about three in ten patients in this study did not respond at all. A small number of patients needed a repeat course of HBO2 for symptoms that returned.
Canadian Relevance
No direct Canadian connection identified; the trial was conducted at hospitals in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.
Study Limitations
The trial was open-label with no masking, follow-up was cut short by 6 months due to funding constraints, and the 5-year finding reflects change within the group who received HBO2 rather than a randomized comparison against the control group at that later time point; adverse events were also tracked only during active HBO2 treatment, not during the long-term follow-up.