The Still Uncertain Future of Ozone Therapy in Medicine

In this final chapter, I will try to ponder on the future of ozone therapy. The potent disinfectant activity of ozone against anaerobic bacteria was utilized during the World War I but, for the next six decades, there was no progress, which came only thanks to a few clinicians, who believed in its usefulness. A major advance came with the work of Dr. H. Wolff (1927–1980) and an Austrian surgeon, Dr. O. Rokitansky, who, in an empirical way, showed the efficacy of the ozonated autohaemotherapy in often avoiding limb amputation in patients with chronic limb ischemia. However the lack of basic research and randomized clinical trials relegated ozone therapy in the field of complementary medicine with a few and nebulous ideas of how ozone could act.