Abstract

AREVALO VELASCO, J.M.  and  ESPINO RODRIGUEZ, F.J.. Retrospective clinical study of an hydrogurgery system on spinal cord injured patients with chronic pressure ulcers. Cir. plást. iberolatinoam. [online]. 2011, vol.37, n.1, pp.1-6. ISSN 1989-2055.

We carried out a retrospective study on spinal cord injured patients from the National Hospital for Paraplegics (Toledo, Spain), who were surgically treated during 2008 to alleviate the problems elicited by one or more pressure ulcers of chronic nature. We reviewed the clinical histories of 84 patients that received 141 surgical procedures, 8 were of radical nature (scalpel plus hidrosurgery) without wound covering. The remaining 133 procedures of surgical cleaning and immediate wound covering have been devided in 2 groups according to the type of debridement performed: Group I (n = 71) with only surgical debridement and Group II (n = 62) with surgical excision followed by hydrosurgery procedure consisting of a high pressure contiuos flow of physiological saline fluid. Based on ulcers location, the procedures were: sciatic (n = 69; 49,94%), sacral (n = 49; 34,75%), trochanteric (n = 15; 10,63 %) and others (n = 8; 5,67 %): heels and malleolus. Our results indicate that more than 54 % of the procedures (72 out of 133) healed; the procedures were carried out on patients with an advanced stage of pressure ulcers hence, the wounds were resilient to treatment; the observed annual rate of relapse was 4,4 %; respecting to the rate of healing, no significant differences were found between group I and II (p < 0,05) and nevertheless, the hidrosurgery system has been proven very effective (100 % success) in 5 patients that required partial skin auto-transplant.

Keywords : Pressure sore; Debridement; Hydrosurgery.

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