Compression for venous leg ulcers

Around one percent of people in industrialised countries will suffer from a leg ulcer at some time. The majority of these leg ulcers are due to problems in the veins, resulting in an accumulation of blood in the legs. Leg ulcers arising from venous problems are called venous (varicose or stasis) ulcers. The main treatment has been a firm compression garment (bandage or stocking) in order to aid venous return. There is a large number of compression garments available and it is unclear whether they are effective in treating venous ulcers and which compression garment is the most effective. To undertake a systematic review of all randomised controlled trials of the clinical effectiveness of compression bandage or stocking systems in the treatment of venous leg ulceration.Specific questions addressed by the review are:1. Does the application of compression bandages or stockings aid venous ulcer healing? 2. Which compression bandage or stocking system is the most effective? For this update we searched the Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register (14/10/08); The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library Issue 4 2008); Ovid MEDLINE (1950 to October Week 1 2008); Ovid EMBASE (1980 to 2008 Week 41) and Ovid CINAHL (1982 to October Week 1 2008). No date or language restrictions were applied. Randomised controlled trials recruiting people with venous leg ulceration that evaluated any type of compression bandage system or compression hosiery were eligible for inclusion. Comparators included no compression (e.g. primary dressing alone, non-compressive bandage) or an alternative type of compression. Trials had to report an objective measure of ulcer healing in order to be included (primary outcome for the review). Secondary outcomes of the review included ulcer recurrence, costs, quality of life, pain, adverse events and withdrawals. There was no restriction on date, language or publication status of trials. Details of eligible studies were extracted and summarised using a data extraction table. Data extraction was performed by one review author and verified independently by a second review author. Overall, 39 RCTs reporting 47 comparisons were included.Review question 1: there was reasonable evidence from seven RCTs that venous ulcers heal more rapidly with compression than without.Review question 2: findings from six trials of single-component compression suggested that this strategy was less effective than multi-component compre