Evaluation of chronic wound treatment with the SNaP wound care system versus modern dressing protocols

• Published in: Plastic and reconstructive surgery (1963) Vol. 126; no. 4; p. 1253
• Main Authors: Lerman, Bruce, Oldenbrook, Leslie, Eichstadt, Shaundra L, Ryu, Justin, Fong, Kenton D, Schubart, Peter J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.10.2010
• Subjects: Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Bandages; Becaplermin; Case-Control Studies; Chronic Disease; Collagen - pharmacology; Female; Foot Ulcer - therapy; Humans; Kaplan-Meier Estimate; Leg Ulcer - diagnosis; Leg Ulcer - therapy; Male; Middle Aged; Negative-Pressure Wound Therapy - instrumentation; Negative-Pressure Wound Therapy - methods; Platelet-Derived Growth Factor - pharmacology; Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-sis; Retrospective Studies; Severity of Illness Index; Skin Transplantation - methods; Treatment Outcome; Wound Healing - physiology
• ISSN: 1529-4242
• DOI: 10.1097/PRS.0b013e3181ea4559

Traditional negative-pressure wound therapy systems use an electrically powered pump to generate negative pressure at the wound bed. The SNaP Wound Care System is a novel, ultraportable device that delivers negative-pressure wound therapy without the use of an electrically powered pump. At an outpatient wound care clinic, 21 subjects with difficult-to-treat lower extremity ulcers received treatment with the SNaP System and were evaluated for wound healing for up to 4 months. Outcomes were then compared with 42 patient-matched controls treated at the same center with modern wound care protocols that included the use of Apligraf, Regranex, and skin grafting. In the SNaP-treated group, 100 percent of subjects demonstrated improvement in wound size and 86 percent (18 of 21) exhibited a statistically significant healing trend (p < 0.05). Using Kaplan-Meier estimates of wound healing, SNaP-treated subjects healed in an average of 74.25 ± 20.1 days from the start of SNaP treatment and the matched controls healed in an average of 148.73 ± 63.1 days from the start of conventional treatment. This significantly faster healing time represents a 50 percent absolute reduction in time to healing (p < 0.0001) for subjects treated with the SNaP device. The findings reported here for the SNaP Wound Care System are similar to published reports for powered negative-pressure wound therapy devices for the treatment of highly challenging lower extremity wounds. This study suggests that the SNaP Wound Care System may be a useful addition to the techniques available to the wound care clinician.