Wikipedista:Psax/Pískoviště/temp

Speleotherapy in the Czech Republic

The first speleotherapy in the Czechoslovakia was carried out by Mgr. Štefan Roda in Slovakia in the Tombašek Cave in the High Tatras (1969). In 1973-1976, doctors Timová and Valtrová from the Children's Clinic in Banská Bystrica treated childhood asthmatics with speleotherapy with favourable results, which were published in the medical literature. From 1981 to 1985, speleotherapy became the subject of official scientific research tasks, carried out under the responsibility of the Ministry of Health and the Geographical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. In 1985, speleotherapy was recognized as an official climatic treatment method.

According to the chairman of the International Union of Speleology's Standing Commission on Speleotherapy, Prof. Svetozar Dluholucky, M.D., speleotherapy is "a natural way of treating asthma and allergies, which it would be a sin not to use." He has conducted research in Bystrianska Cave since 1974, according to which there has been a fivefold decrease in respiratory diseases and asthma in the children studied. In 1997, he conducted further research on 111 asthmatic children with the same results. Allergists and immunologists remain sceptical, however.

There are two speleotherapy centres in the Czech Republic: the Children's Treatment Centre in Ostrov u Macochy and the Children's Treatment Centre for Respiratory Diseases in Zlaté Hory. The children's sanatorium in Mladč-Vojtěchov was closed in 2014.

International symposia

(https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bdca/224d26be24111ff7002bf9a0f915963e5369.pdf) 2008 - XIII International Symposium on Speleotherapy, 23-25 October in Blansko. 2012 - XIVth International Symposium on Speleotherapy, 4-6 October in Turda (Cluj County, Romania), with 143 participants from 11 different countries. 2013 - Speleotherapy Symposium in the framework of the International Speleological Congress of the UIS in Brno. 2014 - XVth International Symposium on Speleotherapy, 23-25 October, Wieliczka, Poland. 2011 - National Conference on Speleotherapy in Turda, hosted by the National Institute of Rehabilitation, Physical Medicine and Balneoclimatology, in Bucharest, Romania and the Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation (UEFISCDI) - Ministry of Education, Research, Tourism and Sport (MECTS), dedicated to the results of the project 2550 (funding contract 42120/2008-2012 of the National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation from Romania). Conference on speleotherapy in Solotvina, Ukraine in 2013, 2015. Seminars in Wieliczka, Poland in 2013, 2014. 2016 - Working meeting in Turda, Romania, with the participation of experts in speleotherapy and mining tourism from Wieliczka, Poland.

Research

Doc. Hoyrmír Malota led a research team that tested patients of the speleotherapeutic sanatorium in Mladeč in 1985-1987 and came to the clinically verified knowledge "that individual factors of the underground environment, or their complex connected by internal and external interactions, stimulate and modulate directly the immune system of the human organism. He confirmed that repeated exposure to the subterranean environment - without the use of anti-asthmatic, antihistamine or immunomodulatory pharmaceutical preparations - induces positive and measurable changes in secretory and lymphatic lysosomes and immunoglobins after only a few days of exposure to a degree that cannot be achieved by any existing artificial immunomodulators."

Some factors characterizing cave endoclimates are controversial. While cave aerosol may theoretically contain high levels of Ca and Mg ions, in practice they are not present in the treatment sites known to date; Ca and Mg concentrations are everywhere the same as in the ambient air. It has been shown that the concentrations of Ca and Mg in cave air are not so significantly elevated as to be considered a therapeutic factor. The elevated CO2 concentration, or the absence of allergens in the cave (the presence of some moulds in very small amounts), or the absence of ozone are also questionable.

According to the Cochrane Collaboration, three studies involving a total of 124 children with asthma met the inclusion criteria for the 2001 meta-study, but only one study was of adequate methodological quality. Two studies reported that speleotherapy had a beneficial short-term effect on lung function. The other results could not be reliably evaluated. Due to the small number of studies, no reliable conclusion can be drawn from the available evidence on whether speleotherapy interventions are effective in the treatment of chronic asthma. Randomised controlled trials with long-term follow-up are needed. No evidence of the effectiveness of speleotherapy was found from randomized controlled trials and further research is needed

According to a 2017 Romanian systematic review, speleotherapy is a valuable treatment method for asthma and other respiratory problems, but only a few studies can be found in international databases, reflecting the specificity of this field. On the other hand, basic studies in laboratory animals and in vitro cell cultures have demonstrated the efficacy and usefulness of speleotherapy.

Quote

„	There are not so many karst caves, so salt mines have been used for treatment for a long time. So sanatoriums were created there and it's called halotherapy. Wieliczka in Poland is very well known. Later on, there was an attempt to make halocaves artificially and they built a kind of igloo out of the salt that was mined. In various studies in the mid-1980s they compared the effect underground and in these salt chambers placed outside. It turned out that the above-ground salt caves had virtually no effect. And even, very easily contaminated with microbes, it can be dangerous. Many of the bacteria that cause severe respiratory infections love salt and settle in the surface layers of salt walls. Even salt mines that operate underground have very strict criteria to ensure that people do not contaminate the salt chamber with germs. Even in some, every three to four months they grind off a few millimetres of the wall because of the bacilli. When their use was abandoned, it was quiet for about five years and it started again. If it's not kept clean, it can be detrimental to health; some types of pneumococcus also stick in there. In our case, they tried to mitigate this by putting in air conditioning systems. But an artificial salt cave system that is fully air-conditioned cannot work. That's about like trying to replicate the Tatra air in a seventh-floor apartment block, it's stupid.	“
— Prof. MUDr. Svetozár DLUHOLUCKÝ, CSc.