Clinical Study Of A Novel Chitosan Wound Dressing For The Treatment Of Chronic Lower Extremity Vascular Ulcers

Chronic lower extremity ulcers are a common and serious health problem. Thesechronic ulcers significantly impact the quality of life for individuals and haveimplications for costs and utilization of healthcare resources. They can be due to amyriad of different diseases, but the primary causes are chronic venous insufficiency,lower extremity arterial disease, and diabetes foot. It’s an important therapy for thechronic lower extremity ulcers to applying of wound dressing. Novel chitosan wounddressing, owing to its nontoxic, biocompatible, biodegradable, hemostatic,antimicrobial, stimulation of healing and other properties, is a kind of ideal modernwound dressings.Objective:The purpose of this study was to observe the clinical effect of novel chitosanwound dressing comparison to traditional vaseline gauze dressing in treating chroniclower extremity vascular ulcers, the difference of curative effect in chronic arterialulcers and chronic venous ulcers, and provide clinical reference for further study onthe mechanism of healing of lower extremity vascular ulcer, also provide the basis forclinical individual therapy.Methods:From January in2013to February in2014, we continuous recruit120patients inline with the conditions of chronic lower extremity vascular ulcer, including60casesof chronic arterial ulcer,60cases of chronic venous ulcer, aged from27to90yearsold, average age is65.6±12.95. They were randomly divided into experimental groupand control group, using the method of randomized block design. There are30caseswith chronic arterial ulcers and30cases with chronic venous ulcer in the experimentalgroup, and the same in the control group. The experimental group applied a novelchitosan wound dressing as the wound dressings, the control group using thetraditional vaseline gauze as the wound dressings. In the4weeks period of treatment, respectively inspect every patients at7th,14th,21th and28th days, measure woundarea, wound area reduction rate, depth, and record exudation of wound, the situationaround the wound, wound bed color and the NRS-11scores for pain, then calculatethe dressing exchange times and the total medical expenses at the end of the test.Results:A total of119patients completed the trial. The wound area reduction rate in theexperimental group at14th,21th,28th days were higher than those in the controlgroup, the NRS-11scores for pain in the experimental group at7th,14th,21th,28thdays were lower than the control group, the exudation of wound in the experimentalgroup at7th,14th,21th,28th days were less than those in the control group, the totaldressing exchange times in the experimental group was less than that in the controlgroup, but the total medical expenditure was higher than that of control group. Thereno statistically significant differences between the arterial ulcer group and the venousulcer group in the wound area reduction rate,wounds exudation,NRS-11score forpain，the times of dressing exchange and total medical expenses(P>0.05).Conclusions:1、Using novel chitosan wound dressing can promote the healing of chronic lowerextremity vascular ulceration，reduce the times of dressing exchange, relievepatient’s pain, It’s worthy of clinical application;2、Although the pathological mechanism of chronic lower extremity arterial ulcer andchronic lower limb venous ulcer is different, under taking the etiological treatmentand wound treatment actively, there is no significant difference in the healing rate.