[Collagen powder dressing in the treatment of pressure ulcer. Multicenter comparative study assessing effectiveness and cost].

Introduction: Pressure ulcers are lesions that usually occur to people to whom the social and economical repercusions are quite serious. Although present treatments with moisture cure dressings are efficient and have a lot of advantages than traditional cure, they do not solve the problem in a significant group of patients, whose ulcers do not heal or need a much longer treatment. Collagen dressings represent an important improvement, since collagen is a key element for wound scarring.

Patients, Material And Methods: We conducted a prospective, comparative and multicentrical study with Catrix, using as a control the same lesion. We compared pressure ulcers that had been previously treated on an average of 6 months without success with Catrix treatment within 7 weeks. We compared different variables, efficacy, opinion on the use of Catrix and economic cost.

Results: We included 104 pressure ulcers that fulfilled the inclusion requirements in the study. Three of them were excluded from the efficiency analysis because of a lack of data since they passed away 7 weeks later. We performed a statistical analysis on all the ulcers (GT) and we also analyzed the pressure ulcer subgroup (SG) included in this study because of a deterioration or a stagnation of the lesion despite previous treatments. Seven weeks after the beginning of the treatment with Catrix the healing or the stage change was observed in 73.3% of lesions of GT group and in 77.8% of lesions of SG group (p < 0.0001). The average material cost and nursing cost from all the lesions that scarred within 7 weeks (n = 39) with previous treatment was 17.234, 10 euros and 10.920 euros with Catrix. The average material cost per lesion used in the previous treatments was 441.9 euros and 280 euros with Catrix.

Discussion: These results prove that the treatment with Catrix significantly reduces the treatment length and therefore leads to a reduction of the sanitary cost in this kind of patients. Adding Catrix to the pressure ulcers treatment helps to increase significantly the scarring and improvement percentage of those pressure ulcers that do not respond to other treatments. It helps to improve patient's quality of life, and to reduce the costs of the treatment.