Toppers: Our 10 Most Popular Stories of 2011

As the year quickly draws to a close, we're thankful for our loyal readers, and for new ones every day. We will work hard to keep bringing you evidence-based hyperbaric oxygen therapy news in the year ahead. Sometimes we hit on a topic, share a video, or link to a story that really strikes a chord. Here's a list of our most popular stories of 2011, in descending order, according to Blogger.

Arthritis: Gout Awareness Day

TBI: Concussion Tests Doing More Harm Than Good?

Should Your Hyperbaric Physician Be Board Certified?

Gingrich Slips HBOT into the Obamacare News Cycle

Hello, Cleveland: HBOT Gets the Plain Deal

HBOT for Radiation Injury of No Use in Nuclear Disaster

National Healing and Diversified to Merge

College Football: New Data on Concussion by Position

Restorix Health Mixes It Up in Greater Seattle

Pioneering Frogman Invented, Named SCUBA

Cheers and best wishes for the New Year.

Gout: "Disease Of Kings" Gaining Prevalence In US

A new analysis shows that gout today afflicts 8.3 million American adults. The prevalence of this painful disease, which affects far more men (6.1 million) than women (2.2 million), has skyrocketed by 44% in the last two decades. Researchers attribute much of this growth to epidemic rates of obesity (body mass index) and high blood pressure (hypertension). The study was published July 28 in Arthritis & Rheumatism, the journal of the American College of Rheumatology. You will find excellent reports on the Scientific American website and in text and audio on the NPR Shots health blog. In our Diseases and Conditions section we file gout under arthritis, as does the Arthritis Foundation. People with gout usually find relief with common antiinflammation medications that reduce levels of uric acid in the joints. We find no good evidence to recommend hyperbaric oxygen.

[Illustration: 1910 Spanish advertisement, NPR Picture Show blog]

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Update: HBOT For Arthritis

Today we have upgraded our Arthritis page but downgraded our Evidence Index score from promising to scant. We briefly explain the reasons behind the change in our new HyperbaricLink Commentary:

HBOT may provide temporary symptom relief for some people with some forms of arthritis. Compared to other popular and effective treatment options, hyperbaric oxygen therapy may never be cost-effective or practical for the daily management of such a lifelong chronic disease. Still, if further research demonstrates the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, a drug-free regimen might offer a welcome alternative for some physicians and patients to consider.

We now refer visitors to the Arthritis Foundation for more complete information and to PatientsLikeMe for community support. Find the new links under Patient Resources.

See our June 7 post, "Diseases/Conditions Upgrades And Updates," for more information about our new page format. And look for regular updates in the days and weeks ahead.

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
 

Arthritis: Gout Awareness Day

Maybe it's the word gout. Most people think of it as a disease from history. Or they find it kind of humorous. Actually, gout is a painful form of arthritis, and according to the Gout and Uric Acid Education Society, the number of Americans with gout has actually doubled over the past 30 years. Our awareness is especially high this Gout Awareness Day, as we begin updating our arthritis page and upgrading our entire Diseases and Conditions section. What a fine time for everyone to download the Society's informative brochure. Now please help us source this neat illustration [above right, click to enlarge].

O2.0 is the news blog of HyperbaricLink, the independent web guide to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Fibromyalgia: Listening To The Voices

Yesterday the excellent Patient Voices series in the New York Times got around to fibromyalgia, and it's another must-see audio slideshow for patients, clinicians, and anyone with any interest in the disease. Also check out the accompanying Well blog and reader discussion, where for once we got a word in edgewise. That's us behind comment #48:

Let’s dispense with the arrogance and guesswork and agree that skepticism (Dr Hirschberg #1) may be statistically safe and expedient but “I don’t know” (bill #24) is the wiser approach to FM. How little we understand. Not long ago, remember, the medical community blamed peptic ulcers on spicy diets and stress-filled lifestyles. Blamed the patients, in other words, millions upon millions of them. The culprit turned out to be a specific bacterium, H. pylori, today diagnosed with a simple breath test and treated with common antibiotics. Instead of taking shortcuts to a nondiagnosis, the unlistening and uncaring physician should try some humility in the face of such a mystery.

We're not saying hyperbaric oxygen therapy is the answer. We're saying let's ask the right questions, listen to real patients like these, and rely upon real clinical evidence to light the way forward.

Off-Label HBOT: Arthritis

Arthritis is so broad a disease state, with so many treatment options, we can't see hyperbaric oxygen ever gaining any real currency. Yet we find, combined with our reading of the medical literature on other chronic pain disorders, rather promising clinical evidence that HBOT can help reduce the pain and inflammation associated with arthritis. And we suppose any drug-free alternative might be welcome news for many of the 19 million patients with rheumatoid (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA), fibromyalgia, gout, lupus, and more than 100 other forms of this devastating disease—the leading cause of disability in the US today.

Jump to our new arthritis page to learn more and to use our HyperbaricLink Evidence Index to guide your personal research.

Evidence: Living In A World Of Pain

A word of advice to the aspiring HBOT researcher: Don't swing for the left field bleachers when all the team needs is a solid base hit. Oh, and don't complain about the lack of reimbursement if you haven't published a tight little study in a nice little journal. Which leads us to today's musical question: Why are we finding all the most promising evidence on hyperbaric oxygen therapy for chronic pain coming out of a military training hospital in Istanbul? Don't answer. We'll take it. More here soon, and new HyperbaricLink condition pages, on chronic regional pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, myofacial syndrome, migraine, and cluster headache.