Negative Pressure Wound Therapy For Treating Traumatic Skin And Soft Tissure Defect Of Limbs: A Systematic Review

Objective: To evaluate the clinical effectiveness and safety of the Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) for treating traumatic skin and soft tissure de-fect of limbs in comparison with conventional therapies.Methods: A computerized search of articles published between 1993 and March 2011 was performed using The Cochrane Library,MEDLINE,EMBASE and Chinese Biomedicine Database(CBM) to identify the clinical controlled trials comparing negative pressure wound therapy versus conventional therapies in treating traumatic skin and soft tissure defect of limbs. The quality of included studies was critically assessed and data analyses were performed with Revman5.0.Results: A total of six clinical control studies were included, involving two randomized trials and four non-randomized trials. Meta-analyses showed that negative pressure wound Therapy compared with conventional therapies got higher rate of wound healing, There were had statistical difference on time to surgical readiness[WMD= -0.53,95%CI(-9.21,-1.49),P=0.001]and time to complete healing[WMD= -2.38,95%CI(-3.61,-1.14),P=0.0002] for primary outcomes. As for the secondary outcomes, There were also had statistical difference on infection rate [OR= 0.2,95%C(I0.07,0.53),P=0.001]and length of stay[WMD= -7.28,95%C(I-11.46.-3.09),P=0.0007] in the two groups.Conclusions: Based on available clinical evidence to support the negative pressure wound therapy in treating traumatic skin and soft tissue defect. Due to the poor quality of the included trials, still needs more high-quality clinical trials to further confirm this.