A Clinical Review of Infected Wound Treatment with Vacuum Assisted Closure® (V.A.C.®) Therapy: Experience and Case Series

ABSTRACT Over the last decade Vacuum Assisted Closure® (KCI Licensing, Inc., San Antonio, TX) has been established as an effective wound care modality for managing complex acute and chronic wounds. The therapy has been widely adopted by many institutions to treat a variety of wound types. Increasingly, the therapy is being used to manage infected and critically colonized, difficult‐to‐treat wounds. This growing interest coupled with practitioner uncertainty in using the therapy in the presence of infection prompted the convening of an interprofessional expert advisory panel to determine appropriate use of the different modalities of negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) as delivered by V.A.C.® Therapy and V.A.C. Instill® with either GranuFoam™ or GranuFoam Silver™ Dressings. The panel reviewed infected wound treatment methods within the context of evidence‐based medicine coupled with experiential insight using V.A.C.® Therapy Systems to manage a variety of infected wounds. The primary objectives of the panel were 1) to exchange state‐of‐practice evidence, 2) to review and evaluate the strength of existing data, and 3) to develop practice recommendations based on published evidence and clinical experience regarding use of the V.A.C.® Therapy Systems in infected wounds. These recommendations are meant to identify which infected wounds will benefit from the most appropriate V.A.C.® Therapy System modality and provide an infected wound treatment algorithm that may lead to a better understanding of optimal treatment strategies.