What is new?
Key findings- •
The Grading of Evidence, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach uncovered the factors that affect the quality of evidence supporting the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy that were otherwise implicit.
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Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is thought to be beneficial for the treatment of various conditions (decompression sickness, carbon monoxide poisoning, central retinal artery occlusion, clostridial myonecrosis, gas gangrene, crush injury, compartment syndrome, enhancement of healing of certain wounds, exceptional blood loss anemia, intracranial abscess, necrotizing soft tissue infections, osteomyelitis, delayed radiation injury, compromised skin grafts and flaps, and thermal burns).
What this adds to what was known?- •
The quality of evidence of the main patient-important outcomes in approved hyperbaric oxygen therapy indications is commonly rated down for the risk of bias and imprecision but rated up because of large effect size for a few indications.
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Most discrepant quality of evidence was in the indications of decompression illness and air/gas embolism (level C, high), carbon monoxide poisoning (level A, very low), and later presentations of idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss and tinnitus (level A, very low).
What is the implication and what should change now?- •
The main implications of this study relate to agenda setting of future research, which should focus on improving the limitations that became more recognizable using the GRADE approach.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is thought to be beneficial and recommended for the treatment of several conditions: air or gas embolism, carbon monoxide poisoning (with and without concomitant cyanide poisoning), central retinal artery occlusion, clostridial myositis and myonecrosis, gas gangrene, crush injury, compartment syndrome, and other acute traumatic ischemias, decompression sickness, enhancement of healing of certain wounds, exceptional blood loss anemia, intracranial abscess, necrotizing soft tissue infections, osteomyelitis, delayed radiation injury, compromised skin grafts, and flaps and thermal burns [1].
Biological rationale and mechanistic plausibility support a therapeutic effect in these conditions. Hyperbaric oxygen increases oxygen transport capacity of the plasma (independent from red blood cells, which is important if a vascular obstruction or hemoglobinopathy exists), generates free radicals that oxidize bacterial cellular structures, improves leukocyte oxygen-dependent peroxidase system, inhibits bacterial growth (particularly anaerobes), reduces tissue edema due to the osmotic effect of oxygen, stimulates the growth of new blood vessels and improves fibroblast function, mobilizes stem/progenitor cells from the bone marrow, and improves the oxygen-dependent transport of antibiotics [2], [3]. Clinical and policy decision-making, however, requires comparative effectiveness evidence warranting high confidence in quantitative estimates of the effect of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on patient-important outcomes.
The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society has been proactive in synthesizing and appraising the quality of evidence that supports the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The Society uses the guideline framework developed by the American Heart Association. In this framework, the “certainty in evidence” is primarily dependent on the study design; level A evidence is derived from multiple randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or meta-analyses, level B is derived from a single RCT or nonrandomized studies, and level C is derived from consensus opinion of experts, case studies, or standard of care [4]. A limitation of this system is the rigidity imposed by the primacy of the study design. Study design is one factor that contributes to the quality of evidence, but it is not the only factor. There are many examples of RCTs that provide evidence warranting low confidence in the estimates of effect and, conversely, examples of observational studies warranting high confidence in the estimates of effect. Another problem is the ambiguous terms used to describe study design. In the American Heart Association classification, for example, level A evidence may be derived from “meta-analysis,” but there is no caveat that defines the design of the studies that contribute to that meta-analysis, which can greatly affect the quality of the meta-analysis evidence.
Clearly, there are factors other than study design that should affect our confidence in the estimates of effect (the quality of evidence). Rigorous frameworks such as Grading of Evidence, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) and other guideline systems [5], [6], [7] that use components of the GRADE system allow for the explicit use of factors that can increase or decrease the quality of the evidence. The GRADE approach has been adopted by more than 70 national and international organizations [8]. A summit report by the American Heart Association Clinical Practice Guideline Methodology Group implied that they will incorporate some of the GRADE elements in future guidelines [9]. Similarly, the Cochrane Collaboration now requires authors to use GRADE for all important outcomes in their systematic reviews. The GRADE approach describes five factors that can lead to rating down the quality of evidence and three factors that can lead to rating up the quality of the evidence, from a starting point determined by study design [10].
In this study, we applied the GRADE approach to appraise the quality of evidence supporting hyperbaric oxygen therapy indications. Although GRADE has been used in a few Cochrane systematic reviews on hyperbaric oxygen therapy, this is the first comprehensive use of GRADE across all indications approved by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society or the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The aim of this study was to determine if using GRADE provides more discrimination and less ambiguous description of the quality of evidence than the American Heart Association method. A more discriminative system not only improves the clarity, transparency, and credibility of the hyperbaric oxygen therapy guidelines but also facilitates the identification of research priorities and strategies in this field.