Topical Oxygen Therapy: What Does the Literature Say

Matthew Regulski, DPM:

Well, I don't want people to think that you're just going to put oxygen on everybody and everybody's going to do great, everybody's going to do fine. And that's why, again, another thing that I wanted to develop, repair to repair, you can't just look at the ... patient. You got to look at the whole patient. We're just not going to put an oxygen boot on there and have that bathing the wound and do nothing else and everybody's going to do great. No, that's not what we're trying to say. That's not what I'm trying to say. You have to pay attention to all those things. That's why a chronic wound is a multifactorial problem that requires multimodal therapy. And it's expensive to treat chronic wounds. I mean, the chronic wound market now is a 98 billion dollar a year market. The money that we spent just in... Think about diabetes in 2000, 27 million people die from diabetes related complications at a cost of 966 billion dollars.

To avail ourselves of these devices that will help us if they can prove that they can do what they say they can do... And yes, down the road we want to do pharmacoeconomic studies on this to show when you're utilizing topical oxygen, that by healing people faster, keeping them out of the hospital, keeping them out of multiple surgical procedures and the like, is going to save money in the long run, but it will save people's lives. When we save limbs, we save lives. So yes, but we're talking about all these different RCTs that have been done, these meta-analysis of multiple RCTs. Think about all the different products and things that we're utilizing in the chronic wound market that do not have any RCT data behind them to actually prove they can do what they say they do. Again, another take home message is that there are multiple RCTs that have been done for topical oxygen showing its value and showing the evidence that it can do what it says it does.

And isn't it amazing when you look at that. 88% reduction in hospitalization, 71% reduction in amputations. Again, adding it into all of those good evidence-based medicine things that you are supposed to be doing. Right? Again, just not putting the boot on everyone and just letting people go and walk around and continue to smoke and have A1Cs of 20 and eating a dozen donuts every day, and don't worry about their blood flow. Right? Nutrition, all that stuff. Again, it's a multifactorial problem requiring multimodal therapy. But I think it's pretty amazing to look at this, an over eight-year period, showing the significance in the reduction in hospitalizations because we know the cost of that being in the hospital and then the resulting reduction in amputation. We know what the survival rates, they're abysmal for diabetics that have BKA 65% within three years, AKA is 84% within three years. Contralateral side goes up to 50% in one year. I think it's quite significant to see the reductions in those hospitalizations and amputations just by the addition of utilizing topical oxygen with your good evidence-based medicine standard of care that you're supposed to do.