Negative pressure wound therapy reduces SSI across surgical specialties

Editor's Note

Compared with standard wound dressings, single-use negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) devices can reduce the incidence of surgical site infection (SSI) in at-risk patients with closed surgical incisions across a range of surgical specialties, according to a data review highlighted in the February issue of the American Journal of Surgery.

Originally published online October 23, the systematic literature review and meta-analysis identified 15,283 articles posted to PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and ClinicalTrials.gov from January 2011 to April 2021. Out of that total, it included 19 articles. “A statistically significant improvement (p ​< ​0.05) in the composite SSI (odds ratio [OR]: 0.36; 95 ​% confidence interval [CI]: 0.27–0.49), superficial SSI (OR: 0.30; 95 ​% CI: 0.17–0.53), and deep SSI (OR: 0.67; 95 ​% CI: 0.46–0.96) outcomes was observed with the sNPWT device compared with standard care in a pooled analysis of all surgical specialties,” researchers wrote.

Specific highlights include:

Surgical site infection is a clinically important complication with high morbidity.

• -80 ​mmHg sNPWT significantly reduces the incidence of deep SSI.
• -80 ​mmHg sNPWT significantly reduces SSI in Class I and Class II surgeries.
• -80 ​mmHg sNPWT is effective at reducing SSI in a range of surgical specialties.
• No significant difference was observed with sNPWT and SoC for organ-space SSI.