Keepers: Our Top 10 Favorite Posts of 2011

In 2011 we posted 136 blog entries. Every day we scour the hyperbaric business and science news. Often we're inspired to share the news with you. Sometimes we hit on a topic, share a video, or link to a story that really reminds us why we do this. Here's a quick selection of favorites you may have missed or may wish to read again.

Quad Cities Homeless Man Gets HBOT for Frostbite

FDA Urges Caution in Negative Pressure Wound Therapy

Evidence-based HBOT: Trust It or Trash It?

Evidence-based HBOT Is Not CAM

Mixing Hyperbaric Oxygen with Other Prescription Drugs

HyperbaricLink: The Only HONcode Certified Website Focused Exclusively on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

HBOT Program Oversight: Exposé Makes Good Points

VIDEO: Fire Suppression Test of USC Catalina Chamber, Avalon, California

CRAO: Fast Intervention with Hyperbaric Oxygen Helps Save Student's Eyesight

Serious Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Risk from Ice Resurfacing Equipment at Indoor Rinks

We thank you for your readership and participation in the year past, and we look forward to bringing you even more evidence-based hyperbaric oxygen therapy news in the year ahead.

Quad Cities Homeless Man Gets HBOT For Frostbite

The pain, the skin and tissue damage, the lack of circulation, the race against the clock to salvage limbs—using hyperbaric oxygen therapy for frostbite must be like treating a burn, a traumatic ischemia, and a chronic wound all at the same time. HBOT is not specifically indicated for the treatment of frostbite. But don't these similarities make good common sense? The online medical literature on HBOT for frostbite dates back to the 1960s. A quick search shows 16 papers on PubMed and over 600 articles on Google Scholar.

Frostbite and hypothermia are much on our minds, as much of the Midwest emerges from dangerous subzero temperatures. Even dashing between warm shelters and warm cars gets our extremities tingling. So we're easily moved by this report of a homeless man in Rock Island, Illinois, now receiving treatment at Trinity Wound Care & Hyperbaric Medicine in Bettendorf, Iowa, in hopes of saving parts of his frostbitten feet. Click here to watch the video. And please follow us on Twitter and join us in sharing this heartwarming story.

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

Off-Label HBOT: Stroke

We paused to read and reread and reflect before scoring the state of the evidence on HBOT for stroke. Let's err on the side of caution: promising. But, really, come on. What's not compelling about increasing blood flow deep in the brain to reduce the extent of tissue damage and speed healing, recovery, and rehabilitation? After all, the very same therapeutic mechanisms were good enough to get HBOT approved for intracranial abscess, not to mention acute traumatic ischemias and chronic wounds. (And stay tuned for traumatic brain injury.)

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