[Vacuum assisted closure--a new method for wound control and treatment]

Despite the numerous advances in wound healing research, the treatment of chronic non-healing wounds still presents a challenge. Vacuum assisted closure is a new technique for wound treatment using negative pressure. The method can be used for the treatment of a wide variety of wounds, including pressure sores, diabetic ulcers, venous ulcers, surgical traumatic wounds and radiated wounds. With the aid of this method pressure is distributed on the wound by using a foam with a specific pore size. The foam is placed over the wound and the wound is covered with an adherent, occlusive dressing thus converting the open wound to a controlled closed wound. The mechanism that stands for the positive effect of the negative pressure dressing is obtained by removing the third space fluids from the area immediately adjacent to the wounds, thus decreasing the pressure on small vessels and improving the blood supply to the wound with positive consequences for this increment.

A new method is presented for the treatment of chronic wounds using negative pressure. The application of the negative pressure to wounds can promote the healing of a variety of chronic non-healing wounds with significant increase in granulation tissue formation.