Education | March 17th, 2026

Delphi Study Expert Panel on Cerebral Gas Embolism Core Outcome Set

Dear Colleague,

The Alfred Hyperbaric Service (Melbourne, Australia), in collaboration with the Hyperbaric Department of the Amsterdam UMC, would like to invite you to participate in a Delphi study to develop a Core Outcome Set (COS) for cerebral gas embolism. The aim of this study is to define the minimum set of outcomes that should be reported in all future cerebral gas embolism case reports, case series, and clinical trials. Establishing a COS will promote consistent outcome reporting and improve the synthesis of data for future meta-analyses.

Study information

We are recruiting participants experienced in the diagnosis, management, and/or treatment (including rehabilitation) of cerebral gas embolism and stroke (of which cerebral gas embolism is a sub-set), and researchers working in these areas.

Participants will be requested to complete a maximum of three rounds of questionnaires to score the relative importance of a selection of outcomes derived from those found in contemporaneous literature. Each round of these surveys should not take more than 5-10 minutes to complete.

All responses and published results will be de-identified. Your email address and survey response data will be entered into the Welphi platform and stored for the duration of the project within local password-protected Alfred Health software. Upon completion of the final round, you may elect to be acknowledged by name in the manuscript, noting that your survey response data will remain anonymous.

Your input would be vital in guiding future reporting of cerebral gas embolism outcomes. Please consider forwarding this invitation to colleagues or contacts experienced with cerebral gas embolism either clinically or in a research capacity, who may be interested in participating – we would very much appreciate your involvement to help build our participant list and to further strengthen our study.

To begin the first round of this study, please follow the link below. For the most seamless experience, we recommend completing this questionnaire on a computer. The link is: https://app2.welphi.com//Pages/RedirectPage.aspx?fENNxd3XrUQkCY0fZSzwdt1Co6qFMDurBq1UijZXnt0=

For any questions about this project, please direct your enquiries to research.hyperbaric@alfred.org.au