This paper focuses on how hyperbaric treatments, specifically hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT), can work to improve brain function and the quality of life of people inflicted with traumatic brain injury (TBI).The paper by Boussi-Gross et al. (2013), carried out a prospective clinical trial to test the effect of HBOT among two groups, viz., treatment with 2months of HBOT and another crossover with 2 months under control and the subsequent under HBOT. The brain function was measured using scores on four aspects, viz., Information processing score(IPS), attention, memory and executive functions(EF) by the subjects in the two groups at different time.
The paper tests for the validity of two research questions, viz., First whether individuals who are administered HBOT experience better cognitive scores that those administered control treatment. Second, whether the quality of life is better for the HBOT group than the group under control treatment. One tailed paired t-test was used for same group comparisons and one tailed paired t-test was used for between group comparisons.
The p-value for comparison in treated group, using the two tailed unpaired t-test, in terms of IPS was found to be less than 0.0001, less than 0.005 for attention, less than 0.0005 for memory and less than 0.0005 for EF. Thus the cognitive skills for treatment group was found to be significantly greater after HBOT. For the cross-over group, the same comparison between baseline and end of control treatment got p-values for IPS as 0.298, 0.368 for attention, 0.233 for memory,0.295 for EF, suggesting no significant change. However the same comparison following the HBOT for cross-over group was found to be less than 0.05 for IPS, less than 0.05 for attention, less than 0.005 for memory and less than 0.05 for EF. Thus HBOT was seen to have significant effect in the cross-over group as well. For quality of life comparison of the score for EQ-5D after HBOT in both cross over and treatment groups were less than 0.0001. The p-value for comparison between control and HBOT for cross-over was less than 0.01.Again for EQ-VAS the p-value for comparison before and after HBOT for both groups were less than 0.0001and the p-value after control for cross-over was 0.373.
Reference
Boussi-Gross, R., Golan, H., Fishlev, G., Bechor, Y., Volkov, O., Bergan, J., ... & Efrati, S. (2013). Hyperbaric oxygen therapy can improve post concussion syndrome years after mild traumatic brain injury-randomized prospective trial. PloS one, 8(11), e79995.
