Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO) for radiation injury to the head and neck has been widely studied. The most recent report is by AR Tahir, et al., “Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for chronic radiation-induced tissue injuries: Australasia's largest study.” Asia Pac J Clin Oncol. (Epub 2014 Nov 9). They found a response rate of 64% for xerostomia and an overall complication rate of 16%. This is comparable to the 50% response rate reported in other studies.
We refer patients to HBO only for severe radiation injuries that are refractory to other therapies because HBO is expensive, time consuming, and not widely available. Xerostomia is fairly common in our head and neck radiotherapy patients, and they respond very well to cholinergic agonists such as Salagen (pilocarpine) and Evoxac (cevimeline).
thank you for your responce. i read the article which you refer. I am writing a article about radiation induced xerostomia and while searching literature i found some references to HBO for xerostomia.
do you have any experience with submandibular gland transfer? there are some studies to indicate they are useful.