Next Steps in NPWTi-d Research

In this video, Paul Kim, DPM, MS, discusses the next steps in the regimentation of NPWT in wound care centers, hospitals, and other types of practices. He also ponders what he would have done differently when applying topical solutions to the wound while using the NPWT system. 

Transcript:

Paul Kim: Yeah. If, if I had to do that multi-center, prospective, randomized study again, I would design it in a fashion where the treatment triggers, triggers are very rigid.

Meaning that there would be less ability for the surgeon to determine whether a wound is ready to go to the OR, if we can create some more of a regimented approach to having access to the ORs. All of those variables that I think really clouded that paper, I think that's what I would do to repeat that study.

The other thing is that in that study, we used PHMB, which is polyhexanide with betaine. It's a pretty well-studied antiseptic, but it also has some deleterious effects to healthy tissue. I'm wondering how much of that influenced the study results for that study.

I would have preferred now, looking back, using something like normal saline, something innocuous, uh, determine whether installation therapy, uh, at its core is, is superior to that of, of standard negative pressure. In my opinion, in the acute setting, it is, but we need more data to, to suggest that.

The other things that I'm, I would love to see in development in the future is using installation therapy on an outpatient basis. Right now, it's really relegated to the acute-care setting and long-term rehab facilities -- some of them, not all of them.

It'd be nice to have a little portable unit that would somehow recycle the fluid and cleanse the fluid. And it would be a closed-loop system where patients, you don't have to hang bags of any kind of solutions or bottles of any kind of solutions. It would just all recycle and recycle itself, and the patient can be used, it can be used safely at home.

That would be a nice thing to innovate and develop, but, uh, and then also study to see the impact of that.