Usefulness of a negative pressure wound therapy system for stoma closure

Although wound infection rates after stoma closure have decreased, they remain high. Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) for stoma closure wounds can shorten healing time for many wound types. The PICO (Smith+Nephew, UK) wound dressing, a single-use NPWT system that can be used for outpatients, was introduced at the Japan Community Health Care Organization Hokkaido Hospital, Japan in November 2017. We evaluated the effectiveness of this dressing in stoma closure wounds.

We retrospectively evaluated patients who underwent stoma closure between March 2012 and July 2021. We compared postoperative short-term outcomes (surgical site infection (SSI), number of pain medications, and postoperative hospital stay) by allocating the patients to one of two groups: purse-string closure or purse-string closure with PICO. The purse-string closure group (PC) underwent purse-string closure alone, while the other group underwent purse-string closure and PICO (PCP).

A total of 35 patients were evaluated; 20 in the PC group and 15 in the PCP group. No significant differences in characteristics were noted between the groups. Comparisons between stoma closure techniques revealed that the PCP group had shorter hospital stays (p=0.04), lower SSI rates (p=0.04), and less pain medication (p<0.01) than the PC group. Comparisons between SSI occurrence revealed that the group of patients with an SSI had a higher number of colostomies compared with ileostomies (37.5% versus 0%, p<0.01, respectively), used more pain medication (p<0.01), and had longer hospital stays (p=0.04) than patients who did not have an SSI.

After stoma closure, combining PICO with purse-string closure may be effective in preventing SSI and controlling postoperative pain.