Introduction: Controversy exists regarding the use of NPWT for wound healing.
Objective: This study assessed the effectiveness of NPWT compared with conventional treatment in the management of different wound types, including acute and chronic wounds.
Materials and methods: PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Scopus, EMBASE, EBSCO, Ovid, and Web of Science were searched, from database inception up to October 2021, for relevant studies comparing NPWT with conventional treatment for wound healing. Primary outcomes included time to healing, wound healing rate, and duration of treatment. Secondary outcomes included adverse events, length of hospital stay, and 30-day mortality rate. Pooled analysis of the outcomes data is presented as SMD (95% CI) for continuous data and OR (95% CI) for dichotomous data.
Results: Twenty-four studies (3064 patients) were included in the meta-analysis. NPWT was associated with shorter time to healing (SMD, -0.79; 95% CI, -1.22 to -0.37), shorter duration of treatment (SMD, -1.24; 95% CI, -1.92 to -0.56), and higher rate of wound healing (OR, 2.05; 95% CI, 1.49-2.83) compared with control. NPWT was also associated with a lower incidence of adverse events (OR, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.23-0.77) and a lower 30-day mortality rate (OR, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.12-0.56). There were no significant differences between NPWT and control regarding hospital stay (SMD, -0.52; 95% CI, -1.06 to 0.03).
Conclusions: NPWT is seemingly associated with better wound healing outcomes compared with conventional therapy. However, the data should be interpreted with substantial caution given limitations such as high heterogeneity between studies and the small sample size of the included studies.