Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy - Hyperbaric Chamber Information ...

• Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute (USA); 18
• NIH Office of Medical Applications of Research (USA); 19
• Office of Technology Assessment Archive (USA); 20
• RAND Corporation (USA); 21
• University Health Systems Consortium (USA); 22 and
• the Veterans Affairs Technology Assessment Program (USA). 23
Other Internet sites are listed in Appendix H.
Access to the Database of Randomised Controlled Trials in Diving and Hyperbaric
Medicine (DORCTHIM) and a number of publications were made available by members
of the MSAC Supporting Committee. Some publications were acquired from health
technology assessment agencies and professional organisations. Textbooks and book
chapters were assessed. Reference lists of publications were scanned and relevant
citations retrieved.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Collected citations were filtered through a multi-level review involving a team with skills
in clinical medicine, public health, health information, basic science, and clinical
epidemiology. Articles were excluded if they met the following criteria:
• focus was not one of the indications determined by the Supporting Committee;
• therapy was not HBO in a monoplace or multiplace chamber;
• uncontrolled studies or those that did not have a comparison group;
• articles that included data presented in later studies; and
• publications in a language other than English.
Figure 1 outlines the process of article selection and exclusion. An initial assessment of
the abstracts of collected citations selected out articles that did not meet the selection
criteria. Ambiguous or uncertain citations proceeded to the next stage. From an initial
search of 5,477 articles, 5,300 were rejected, leaving 177 articles to be assessed in full-text
form. Full text articles from the remaining citations were retrieved and assessed further.
A final decision was made to reject articles based on a thorough reading of the complete
article. Only the studies that successfully passed this process are discussed further. In this
review, 80 studies were assessed to have met inclusion and exclusion criteria.
10 Hyperbaric oxygen therapy