Impact of negative pressure wound drainage compared with natural wound drainage after thyroid tumour surgery: A meta‐analysis

We conducted a meta‐analysis to compare the effectiveness of negative pressure wound drainage to that of spontaneous wound drainage after thyroid tumour surgery. A thorough analysis of the literature up to July 2022 revealed that, of the 1234 patients who used surgery for thyroid tumours, 615 used negative pressure wound drainage and 619 used natural wound drainage. To measure the influence of negative pressure wound drainage in comparison to natural wound drainage following thyroid tumour surgery, mean difference (MD) and odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were measured using the contentious and dichotomous approaches with a random or fixed‐effect model. Subjects who used negative pressure wound drainage had significantly higher averages for drained material (OR, 12.52; 95% CI, 6.78‐18.26, P = 0.001), shorter drain placement times (MD, −1.06; 95% CI, 1.57 to −0.55, P = .001), lower rates of infection at the surgical site (OR, 0.17; 95% CI, 0.05‐0.60, P = .006), higher rates of wound healing (OR, 5.91; 95% CI, 1.56‐22.34, P = .009), and lower rate of wound seroma (OR, 0.21; 95% CI, 0.10‐0.42, P < .001) in subjects after thyroid tumour surgery in comparison to subjects who used natural wound drainage after thyroid tumour surgery. Those who used negative pressure wound drainage had significantly higher averages of drained material, shorter drain placement times, lower rates of wound infection at the surgical site, higher rates of wound healing, and lower rates of wound seroma. Care must be used when analysing the results because of the small sample size of 7 of the 13 studies included in the meta‐analysis and the lack of studies in several comparisons.