Title: Role of Negative Pressure Wound Therapy in the Management of Diabetic Foot Ulcers
Authors: Dr Krishna Girish A, Dr Prabhakara GN, Dr Sharath Kumar S
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v8i4.49
Abstract
Purpose: To compare the efficacy of negative pressure wound therapy with conventional dressing in the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers.
Materials and Methods: The study included 48 patients randomized into two groups (24 patient for negative pressure wound therapy and 24 patient for conventional wound dressing) suffering from diabetic foot wounds.
Results: Patients subjected to NEGATIVE PRESSURE WOUND THERAPY were classified as Study groupand those who underwent conventional povidine iodine wound dressings were classified as control group.The age of the patients varied from 35 to 75 years. Maximum number of cases belong to the age group of 35 to 45 years. In both study and control group diabetes is more common among males compared to females. Among them 79.2% of the patients were male and 20.8% were female. The patients in both groups were subjected to split thickness skin grafting as the final treatment modality. The graft up-take was then assessed at the end of the 5th post-operative day as the percentage of ulcer surface area.In study group 93 % graft take up was seen while it was 84% in the control group.Duration of hospital stay as number of days of admission in the hospital is as above.The mean duration of hospital stay in Study group was 40.3 and 18.1 in the control group.
Conclusion: In the present study it was concluded that negative pressure wound therapy by forming healthy granulation tissue helps in better graft take up than theconventional dressing. Because of enhanced healing and overall hospital stay, the postoperative complications were less in negative pressure wound therapy. Negative pressure wound therapy dressing can be considered as superior option in management of diabetic ulcers. An easy and cheap alternative method of NPWT to the extremity wounds using sterile surgical gloves. NPWT turned out to be a good alternative with respect to the duration and cost of treatment and ergonomically better in the management of extremity wounds. NPWT dressing thus is an effective and widely available therapeutic agent in wound healing.
Keywords: Conventional Dressing, Negative Pressure Wound Therapy, Skin Grafting.
