The Evidence Basis of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine

This book is written primarily for diving and §hyperbaric physicians in the hope of improving §access to the best clinical evidence in our field. §HBOT is a poorly understood therapeutic modality and §remains on the fringe of accepted medical practice §despite 50 years of clinical experience. One §criticism made of this field is that treatment is §based on little or no good clinical evidence. The §aims of this book are to collate all the available §randomised evidence, with a standard critical §appraisal of each individual paper using accepted §evidence-based principles, and to synthesise that §evidence in a series of systematic reviews with cost-§effectiveness analyses. The reviews suggest that §HBOT is justified as a routine therapy in a number §of indications, clearly unhelpful in others and is §of unclear benefit in yet others. Recommendations §for therapy and future research directions can be §made on the basis of these analyses. §For non-medical readers, the inclusion of 'Plain §English' summaries for each of the meta-analyses §should improve the appreciation of the arguments for §and against HBOT for the majority of indications.