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Associations between patient, treatment, or wound‐level factors and venous leg ulcer healing: Wound characteristics are the key factors in determining healing outcomes
Author(s) -
Weller Carolina D.,
Bouguettaya Ayoub,
Team Victoria,
Flegg Jennifer,
Kasza Jessica,
Jayathilake Chathranee
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
wound repair and regeneration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.847
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1524-475X
pISSN - 1067-1927
DOI - 10.1111/wrr.12773
Subject(s) - medicine , wound healing , venous leg ulcer , randomized controlled trial , wound care , varicose ulcer , intensive care medicine , surgery , physical therapy
Chronic venous leg ulcers are challenging to heal and often recur. This has a significant impact on older individual health and is a financial burden on health care resources. This study aimed to identify factors associated with the healing of venous leg ulcers via secondary examination of data from a previously published prospective randomized controlled trial of elastic and inelastic compression systems. The data from the 45 patients who finished the trial was reanalyzed for a hypothesis generating study. Larger ulcers, higher exudate levels, larger calf circumferences, and longer ulcer duration at baseline were associated with lack of healing at 12 weeks. There was some evidence that NSAID use was associated with an increased likelihood of nonhealing (unadjusted OR for healing, 0.13, 95% CI (0.02, 0.70)). There was no evidence that other variables, including gender and BMI, were associated with healing. The key risk factors for wound healing are largely wound based or inherent to wound development, as these were found to be the factors with the strongest associations in the analysis. Future research should address how and why these factors are associated with wound healing over a longer time frame and explore how NSAIDs may affect wound healing outcomes.