Hilotherapy is a continuous-flow therapy that may be used as thermotherapy for warming or as cryotherapy

Cryotherapy

Cryotherapy is the local or general use of low temperatures in medical therapy or the removal of heat from a body part. The term "cryotherapy" comes from the Greek cryo meaning cold and the word therapy meaning cure...

for cooling. A device (Hilotherm) provides exactly the selected temperature between 10°C and 38°C. This temperature is applied to the patient by face masks or body cuffs. [, 2, 3]

Most common application

Hilotherapy is a form of cryotherapy, which is a widely used method to treat patients after surgeries or injuries. It is applied to stop bleeding (through vasoconstriction) and avoid swelling, hematoma, and pain. [4, 5, 6] However, there are also negative effects of cryotherapy when treatment temperatures are too low. Those are: frostbite [7], reactive hyperaemia (increased bleeding) [8, 9, 10], increased swelling (with 5°C to 15°C tissue temperature) [11, 12, 13], and nerve palsy [7, 14, 15, 16].

Benefits of Hilotherapy

Unlike most cooling methods, hilotherapy offers the possibility of controlling the exact temperature setting for the treatment. [, 2, 3] Therefore it is safer but, as a continuous-flow cold therapy, also more effective than non-continuous-flow systems (ice, compresses, bucket systems etc.) in terms of pain/analgesics reduction [, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23], reduced swelling [, 22], and greater early range of motion [, 17, 18, 20, 23].