The impact of ulinastatin on wound infection and healing in patients with burn wounds: A meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT

Burn injuries result in localised tissue damage and precipitate systemic responses; routine clinical treatments, which typically include metabolic nutritional support and anti-infection therapies, do not yield optimal outcomes. Therefore, we aimed to systematically evaluate the effects of ulinastatin on wound infection and healing in patients with burns to provide reliable evidence-based recommendations for burn treatment. An electronic search of the Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Wanfang, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases, supplemented by manual searches, was conducted from database inception to October 2023 to collect randomised controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the efficacy of ulinastatin for the treatment of burns. Two researchers screened all retrieved articles according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria; the included studies were evaluated for quality, and the relevant data were extracted. Stata 17.0 software was employed for data analysis. Overall, 8 RCTs with 803 patients were included, with 404 and 399 in the ulinastatin and conventional treatment groups, respectively. The analysis revealed that wound infections (odds ratio [OR] = 0.08, 95% CI 0.02-0.35, p = 0.001) and complications (OR = 0.21, 95% CI 0.10-0.42, p < 0.001) were significantly lower, and wound healing time (standardised mean differences [SMD] = -1.31, 95% CI -2.05 to -0.57, p = 0.001) was significantly shorter, in the ulinastatin groups than in the control group. This meta-analysis revealed that ulinastatin can effectively reduce the incidence of wound infections and complications and significantly shorten the duration of wound healing in patients with burns, thereby promoting early recovery in these patients.