February 27, 2001 – For several years, parents of children with cerebral palsy have often paid for expensive hyperbaric chamber treatments in the hope of improving the lot of their children. Hyperbaric chambers, or chambers, provide pressurized oxygen to those in them. The logic of this treatment is to try to restore brain functions affected by the lack of oxygen at birth.
The treatment is offered by several medical centers in the United Kingdom and the United States without its effectiveness having been really demonstrated. Following the campaign of a group of Quebec parents, a randomized study was undertaken in several hospitals with 111 children, 57 of whom received hyperbaric oxygen treatment at a pressure of 1.75 atmospheres and 54 received mild air treatment. pressurized to 1.3 atmospheres, the lowest pressure that can be felt. The children received 40 one-hour treatments over a two-month period.
To the researchers’ surprise, all of the children saw their performance improve significantly evenly. For many observers, these results confirm that the hyperbaric oxygen treatment is ineffective, while the proponents of the treatment see it as confirmation that the use of pressurized air leads to positive results. The improvement in performance was maintained for at least three months after the end of treatment, when the children were given the last follow-up test. The most severely affected children were those whose results improved the most.
Researchers, whose most rigorous study of hyperbaric oxygen treatment for cerebral palsy to date, conclude that hyperbaric oxygen is not more effective than pressurized air, but the improvement seen in the two groups encourage further research.
HealthPassport.net
Jean-Paul Collet, Michel Vanasse, Pierre Marois, Maxime Amar, Joanne Goldberg, Jean Lambert, Maryse Lassonde, Paule Hardy, Josée Fortin, Stéphane D Tremblay, David Montgomery, Jacques Lacroix, Ann Robinson, Annette Majnemer, et al., Hyperbaric oxygen for children with cerebral palsy: a randomized multicentre trial. Lancet 2001; 357: 582-86
