Effectiveness of testing hard-to-heal wounds for bacterial protease activity: a randomised clinical trial.

Objective: The study aimed to evaluate whether using a point-of-care test for bacterial protease activity (BPA) to target antimicrobial dressing use can improve outcomes for hard-to-heal wounds and reduce cost.

Method: Wounds asymptomatic for infection and testing positive for BPA were randomly assigned to two weeks' treatment with a silver antimicrobial dressing in addition to standard of care (SoC) (intervention group) or to SoC only (control group). The patient's outcomes were monitored for 12 weeks.