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Indigenous Negative Pressure Wound Therapy: A Low-cost Equivalent Alternative to Conventional Vacuum-assisted Closure Therapy - A Prospective Randomized Open-blind Endpoint Study

Gupta GK, Shukla GK, Rani S, Chakraborty R, Kumar T, Siddhant NC

Annals of African medicine, 2025

86 participants · 1 citation

Abstract

Background: Vacuum assisted closure therapy (VAC) is a noninvasive, cost-effective alternative to surgical wound management. Indigenous negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) systems offer comparable clinical outcomes without financial constraints.

Materials and methods: This prospective comparative study was conducted over 1 year at the Orthopedics department of RIMS, Ranchi. Eligibility criteria included patients with Gustilo-Anderson class 2, 3A, or 3B wounds, with exclusion criteria such as vascular injury or wound <10mm. Sample size was calculated to be 86 participants (43 per group). Data collection involved semi-quantitative wound assessments and wound surface area measurements, and statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software. Student t -test and Chi-square test were used to test statistical significance.

Results: The study revealed that the conventional negative pressure wound therapy led to faster wound healing, with a mean time of 31.1 days compared to 34.7 days in the indigenous therapy group. Assessment of wound bed score parameters showed similar results between the groups initially, with slight variations noted in certain aspects like severity of exposed bone/tendon during the second VAC applications.

Conclusion: The study found that indigenous VAC therapy reduced wound healing time significantly. Both therapies had similar wound management outcomes, with minor differences in wound bed score parameters. However, conventional therapy displayed better…

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design. Reported size: 86 participants or records.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

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