Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Fails To Lower Risk of Surgical Site Infections: Study

The findings go against centuries of assumption that negative pressure wound therapy helps prevent infections.

Researchers from the U.K. and Australia warn that a common wound care technique, which has been widely believed to help prevent surgical infections, may not be as effective as once thought.

In a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on January 27, University of Birmingham researchers found that using negative pressure wound dressings instead of standard ones does not lower the rate of surgical infections.

When patients undergo surgery, doctors place sterile gauze covered with surgical tape to absorb fluid and blood, as well as protect the incision. However, another technique, negative pressure wound dressing, is commonly used as a technique to help prevents infections.

Vacuum-assisted closure, also known as negative pressure wound therapy, involves cleaning the wound, covering it with a foam dressing, and sealing it with an adhesive film. This film is connected to a suction pump, which doctors use to apply continuous or intermittent suction that removes excess fluid and debris from the wound.

Negative pressure wound dressings are believed to enhance blood flow to the wound, which can speed up healing and reduce infections. Although this technique has a long history, it was officially approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1995.

A lot of attention is placed on the prevention of surgical site infections because they can lead to other types of complications after surgery, including long-term health issues and death. In addition to the risks to the patient, surgical site infections also increase the financial burden on the patient and the medical system.

To determine if negative pressure wound dressings were more effective than standard treatment, a team of researchers from the University of Birmingham compared them with traditional wound dressings to determine if either led to fewer surgical infections.

They conducted a randomized control trial of 840 adults undergoing emergency laparotomy at 22 hospitals in the U.K., and 12 hospitals in Australia, from December 2018 to May 2021. Patients who underwent unplanned abdominal surgery were randomized to receive either the traditional wound dressing or the negative pressure wound dressing.

According to their findings, there was no meaningful difference in surgical site infections in either group. The rate of surgical site infections in the traditional dressing group was 27.4%, compared to 28.4% in the negative pressure dressing group, which the researchers determined was not statistically significant.

There were also no significant differences in rates of hospital readmission, quality of life and length of hospital stay, leading the researchers to conclude that their findings do not support the routine use of negative pressure wound dressings for post-surgery care, as they do not reduce the risk of surgical infections.