Effect of prophylactic negative pressure treatment for post‐surgery groin wounds management in vascular surgery: A meta‐analysis

We performed a meta‐analysis to evaluate the effect of prophylactic negative pressure treatment for post‐surgery groin wounds management in vascular surgery. A systematic literature search up to April 2022 was performed and 1537 total number of groin vascular surgery incisions at the baseline of the studies; 729 of them were using the prophylactic negative pressure treatment, and 808 were using control. Odds ratio (OR) and mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the effect of prophylactic negative pressure treatment for post‐surgery groin wounds management in vascular surgery using the dichotomous, and contentious methods with a random or fixed‐effect model. The prophylactic negative pressure treatment subjects had a significantly lower surgical site wound infection (OR, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.16‐0.42, P < .001) in subjects after vascular surgery compared with control. However, prophylactic negative pressure treatment did not show any significant difference in revision surgery (OR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.52‐1.00, P = .05), readmission (OR, 0.93; 95% CI, 0.66‐1.32, P = .69), mortality in hospital (OR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.29‐1.01, P = .05), and length of hospital stay (MD, −0.24; 95% CI, −0.91‐0.44, P = .49) compared with control in subjects after vascular surgery. The prophylactic negative pressure treatment subjects had a significantly lower surgical site wound infection and no significant difference in revision surgery, readmission, mortality in hospital, and length of hospital stay compared with control in subjects after vascular surgery. The analysis of outcomes should be with caution because of the low sample size of 2 out of 10 studies in the meta‐analysis and a low number of studies in certain comparisons.