Hydrocolloid dressings for healing diabetic foot ulcers

There may be no difference in the effects of hydrocolloid wound dressings compared to other types of dressings or a topical cream containing plant extracts in healing diabetic foot ulcers.

The quality of evidence is downgraded by study limitations (lack of allocation concealment and blinding) and by imprecise results (few patients and outcome events).

Summary

A Cochrane review included 5 studies with a total of 535 subjects. These compared hydrocolloids with basic wound contact dressings, foam dressings, alginate dressings and a topical treatment.

Meta-analysis of two studies indicated no statistically significant difference in ulcer healing between fibrous-hydrocolloids and basic wound contact dressings (RR 1.01; 95% CI 0.74 to 1.38, n = 229). One of these studies found that a basic wound contact dressing was more cost-effective than a fibrous-hydrocolloid dressing. One study compared a hydrocolloid-matrix dressing with a foam dressing and found no statistically significant difference in the number of ulcers healed (n = 40). There was no statistically significant difference in healing between an antimicrobial (silver) fibrous-hydrocolloid dressing and standard alginate dressing (n = 134), an antimicrobial dressing (iodine-impregnated) and a standard fibrous hydrocolloid dressing (n = 211), or a standard fibrous hydrocolloid dressing and a topical cream containing plant extracts (n=24).

Clinical comments

Clinicians may wish to consider aspects such as dressing cost and the wound management properties offered by each dressing type.

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Ədəbiyyat

1. Dumville JC, Deshpande S, O'Meara S et al. Hydrocolloid dressings for healing diabetic foot ulcers. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013;(8):CD009099.