No abstract

Introduction: The standard treatment of subjective tinnitus hardly reaches the level of placebo controls. Though the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygenation (HBO) for subjective tinnitus has never been objectified, it is still advocated by some institutions. We analyzed the effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen treatment in the context of accompanying factors. Patients and Methods: We randomized 360 patients suffering from tinnitus into 2 HBO treatment protocols (group A: 2.2 bar for 60 min bottom time and group B: 2.5 bar for 60 min bottom time once a day for 15 days). All patients were asked to fill in a questionnaire (social and medical history, tinnitus characteristics, pre-HBO duration of tinnitus, prior therapy, pretreatment expectation, accompanying symptoms). A subjective assessment of the therapeutic effect was obtained. Results: Twelve patients (3.3%) experienced complete remission of tinnitus, in 122 (33.9) the intensity lessened, and 44 (12.2%) had a subjectively agreeable change of noise characteristics. No change was found in 157 cases (43.6%) and 25 (6.9%) experienced deterioration. There was no statistically significant difference between groups A and B (p > 0.05). Out of 68 patients with a positive expectation of HBO effects, 60.3% stated that the tinnitus had improved whereas only 47.2 and 19%, respectively, out of patients who underwent therapy with an indifferent (n = 271) or negative expectation (n = 21) reported an improvement. The influence of subjective expectation on the outcome was statistically significant (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The therapeutic effects of HBO on subjective tinnitus may be substantially influenced by psychological mechanisms.

Emergency physicians care for patients with pain on an extremely frequent basis [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Th e prevalence of pain as the presenting complaint of patients seeking eme rgen cy department (ED) care ranges from 38 % [3] to as high as 78 % [1]. As a result, evidence-based use of analgesics should be a foundational skill of emergency physicians. However, the literature consistently reports that emergency physicians are ofte n poor at treating pain [1,2,8,13,14,16,19,20] . Notwithstanding the prevalence of pain in the ED, many patients often report that their pain was no t pr oper ly t reated [3,7,20]. I n addi tion to a compromised patient experience, sub-optimal treatment of pain will result in decreased department fl ow, increased wait times, more return visits to the ED, and increased hospitalization rates.Very few evidence-based resources and guideli nes exis t to inform emergency physicians on how to treat pain. One recent guideline on acute pain management compiled by the college of Anaesthetists of Australia and New Zealand [21] was focused primarily on treating pain perioperatively and did not include stratifi ed or graded recommendations based on the literature, highlighting the paucity of emergency medicine-specifi c guidance. Emergency physicia ns need an eff ective, evidenced-based approach to analyze and apply the options available for acute pain management.Th e objective of this article is to synthesize and evaluate the quality of medical literature surrounding analgesia delivery in the adult ED using the Grading Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) framework. We further strived to provide emergency physicians with graded recommendations upon which analgesics should be used to treat adults with acute pain in the ED. Question formulationPrior to searching the literature we developed seven clinically-oriented questions based on a scoping of the literature and a review of locally utilized ED analgesic order sets. Th is initial surveying of medical literature and our local practice environment allowed us to identify the most commonly prescribed intravenous and oral analgesics used in adult EDs in our health care region.We then used the patient-intervention-comparisonoutcome (PICO) approach to develop our seven research questions (Table 1). Th is approach has been adopted by many authors of systematic reviews and guideline panels, including the Internati onal Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) and the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) [22][23][24]. It involves identifying a specifi c population or setting to which recommen dations may be applied. Subseq uently each question compares two specifi c management strategies (intervention and comparison). Fi nally, we defi ned important patient oriented outcomes (e. g., change in pain) as well as any adverse eff ects of the medication or other safety concerns.All seven draft questions were reviewed and revised through an iterative process involving all authors. Th ese seven cl...