Dressing interventions to heal pressure ulcers: A protocol for an overview of systematic reviews and meta-analysis

Pressure ulcer (PU) is defined as a lesion or trauma to the skin and underlying tissue resulting from unrelieved pressure, shear, friction, moisture, or a combination of all these, usually appearing over a bony prominence. We aim to evaluate the credibility of systematic reviews and meta-analyses that assess the effectiveness, safety, and economy of the dressing treatments for PU through an overview.

We searched the following electronic bibliographic databases: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CINAHL Complete, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, DynaMed Plus, as well as the Chinese databases without any language restriction. We will include meta-analyses that dressings treatments in the management of PUs. For each meta-analysis, we will estimate the effect size of a treatment through the random-effect model and the fixed-effect model, and we will evaluate between-study heterogeneity (Cochrane's Q and I statistics) and small-study effect (Egger's test); we will also estimate the evidence of excess significance bias. Methodological quality of each meta-analysis will be evaluated by using Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews 2.

This study is ongoing and the results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication.

Ethical approval is not applicable, since this is an overview based on published articles.

The protocol has been registered on PROSPERO under the number CRD42020161232.