Review of foreign research on speleotherapy

LI Xi; YANG Xiao-xia; XIANG Xu; SHI Ding-fang

Abstract：Speleotherapy,a new medical approach,makes use of caves as special medical sites.It is a new form of cave resource utilization,with great potential for further development.Speleotherapy terms,inclu-ding "speleotherapy","cave therapy","cave treatment"and"halotherapy"were used as keywords to search the Web of Science database,and 32 papers from 1 978 to 2013 were retrieved.It was determined that spe-leotherapy research has mainly focused on the origin and development of speleotherapy,the medical function of caves,mechanisms of treatment in respiratory and clinical application,radon concentration measurement and prevention in therapeutic caves and medical tourism.However,it is clear that some problems remain, such as the rather limited number of studies and non-comprehensive results.Additionally,comprehensive re-search methods are lacking,research results are distributed unevenly in terms of geographical location and achievements using theoretical methods are relatively limited.It is suggested that future study of speleother-apy should be focused on,general applicability of the research,method diversity,medical treatment mecha-nisms,environmental standards for speleotherapy,cave medical tourism and halotherapy.