Closed incision negative pressure therapy use as a strategy to reduce sternal wound infection in identified high-risk patients: A multicentre propensity-matched study.

OBJECTIVE: The premise of this retrospective study was to evaluate the intraoperative use of closed incision negative pressure therapy (ciNPT) to help reduce the incidence of postoperative sternal wound infections (SWI) in multimorbid patients with an elevated risk of developing an SWI post cardiac surgery versus a cohort that received standard of care dressings. METHODS: Data of all adult patients were collected from each cardiothoracic surgery units across three hospitals in the United Kingdom. High-risk patients had two or more recognised risk factors. Fisher's exact test (two-tailed) and unpaired t-test helped analyse categorical and continuous data. Propensity matching was performed to compare the two groups. RESULTS: A total of 5,288 patients who had cardiac surgery were included. Propensity matching led to 766 matched cases. There were significantly fewer sternal wound infections in the ciNPT group (43 [5.6%] versus 119 [15.5%] cases; p = 0.0001), as well as fewer deep sternal wound infections (14 [1.8%] versus 31 [4.0%] cases; p = 0.0149) and superficial sternal wound infections (29 [3.8%] versus 88 [11.4%] cases; p = 0.0001). A higher mean length of stay in the ciNPT group was statistically significant (11.23±13 versus 9.66±10 days; p = 0.0083) as well as a significantly higher mean logistic EuroSCORE (11.143±13 versus 8.094±11; p = 0.0001). A statistically significant higher readmission to intensive care due to sternal wound infection was noted for the Control (16 [2.08%] versus 3 [0.39%] readmissions; p = 0.0042). CONCLUSION: ciNPT appears to be an effective intervention to help reduce the incidence of sternal wound infection in high-risk individuals undergoing cardiac surgery.

Major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular event and patients' quality of life after endoscopic vein harvesting as compared with open vein harvest (MAQEH): a pilot study.

Background: This is a prospective, comparative, pilot and follow-up (2-year postoperatively) study in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery where the long saphenous vein was harvested either by the endoscopic vein harvest (EVH) technique or open vein harvest (OVH) technique. Quality of life (QOL) and major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCE) were assessed. Methods: Alive patients who were initially part of a pilot study when EVH was introduced in our institution were included (n=48 EVH, n=49 OVH). Patients were sent a QOL questionnaire (SF12v2; 12-item medical outcomes study short form health survey version 2.0), and their cardiologist and general practitioner were contacted to assess MACCE. Results: Median follow-up was 32 and 33 months, respectively. Three patients died (2 EVH, 1 OVH). Of the remaining 97 patients who were sent a questionnaire, 76% patients returned the form. More patients from the EVH group returned the QOL questionnaire (82% vs 71%). Time taken to return to normal daily activities was much shorter in EVH (median 6 (2-30) weeks) compared with OVH (median 9 (2-50) weeks) (P<0.05). QOL questionnaire revealed significant difference in physical score at follow-up: 45.3 (10.2) for EVH group and 40.7 (11.0) for OVH group (P<0.05). There was no difference in mental scores (46.9 (10.5) vs 49.2 (9.1), P=0.4). There were no significant differences in MACCEs including death between the two groups (12.2% vs 13.9%, P=0.5). Conclusion: EVH patients returned to normal daily activities faster than OVH patients and experienced better physical QOL even after 2 years postoperatively with no increase in MACCE during follow-up.