Dressings and topical agents for preventing pressure ulcers

Dressings applied over bony prominences may reduce pressure ulcer incidence.

The quality of evidence is downgraded by study limitations (unclear allocation concealment and lack of blinding), and by indirectness (participants were at very high risk of pressure ulcer development, so results may not be generalsable to all hospitalized patients).

Summary

A Cochrane review included 9 studies (one of which was a cluster RCT) with a total of 1 501 subjects. The studies explored the impact of dressings (4) or topical agents (5) on the incidence of pressure ulcers. Dressings applied over bony prominences reduced pressure ulcer incidence (table ). No overall beneficial effect of the topical agents was found. When the cluster randomized trial was omitted from the analysis, use of topical agents reduced the pressure ulcer incidence by 36% (RR 0.64, 95% CI 0.49 to 0.83; 4 studies, n=879).

Clinical comments

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Ədəbiyyat

1. Moore ZE, Webster J. Dressings and topical agents for preventing pressure ulcers. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013;(8):CD009362.