Clinical Research

(CR-024) Cost, Convenience and Complications: Comparison between Copper Oxide Dressings (COD) and Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT). Preliminary results of a randomized controlled trial

Co-Author(s):

Jihad Dabach, MD – Rambam Health Care Campus

Introduction: Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) is the standard of care for treating large and deep wounds, especially of hard to heal wounds. Cost is a major limitation of its use in low resource countries as well as in modernized economies. Patients’ convenience is another obstacle to common use of NPWT, despite evidence of its superiority over common wound dressings. Copper Oxide Dressings (COD) have been recently introduced into clinical practice due to their antimicrobial properties. Basic science research and clinical experience showed their positive effect also in inducing wound healing, including stimulation of autolytic debridement, granulation tissue formation and epithelization. Methods: Due to encouraging clinical experience with COD, we initiated a randomized controlled trial with 60 diabetic patients comparing between COD management to NPWT different wound related paraments, including such as cost, pain, and convenience to the patients and staff. Results: While preliminary analyses of the wound size and condition of the ongoing trial indicate non-inferiority of the COD treatment as compared to NPWT, the preliminary results already show significant reduction in cost and wound complications and increased convenience of use in patients treated with COD versus NPWT. The updated statistics for the patients that will finish the study by the end of September 2022 will be presented in the conference. Discussion: The use of COD for the management of diabetic wounds indicated non-inferiority as compared to NPWT in regards to the wound parameters. Importantly, there are already very clear benefits of using the COD than NPWT, such as convenience to the patients and staff and reduced costs, etc. raising the possibility of using the COD instead of NPWT for the management of diabetic foot wounds, especially in poor resource countries. Trademarked Items: References: