Effect of Polyethylene Cover for Preventing Corneal Injury in Critically Ill Patients: A Meta-Analysis

OBJECTIVE: Polyethylene cover has been proved to be an effective method in protecting corneal, but its advantage compared to other conventional methods is still unclear. Our study is aimed at assessing clinical effects of polyethylene cover versus other methods in the prevention of corneal injury for critically ill patients. METHODS: We searched randomized controlled trials comparing polyethylene cover versus other methods for critically ill patients through the databases of PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge database. Forest plots and funnel plots were also performed on the included articles. Results were expressed as risk ratio (RR) with 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS: Eight studies were eventually identified. The incidence of corneal injury in the polyethylene cover group was lower than that in the eye drops group (RR = 0.24, 95% CI (0.12, 0.45), P < 0.0001) but had no significant difference when compared to the eye gel group (RR = 0.42, 95% CI (0.13, 1.34), P = 0.14) and the eye ointment group (RR = −0.61, 95% CI (0.23, 1.59), P = 0.31). CONCLUSION: This study showed that polyethylene cover, eye gel, and eye ointment had an equal effect for preventing corneal injury in critically ill patients, and the effect of eye drops was relatively low. However, there were other intervention methods that had not been compared due to the small number of articles; further studies should be performed to assess which method was the best practice method.