Negative pressure wound therapy for post-sternotomy mediastinitis reduces mortality rate and sternal re-infection rate compared to conventional treatment.

Objective: Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) is a recently introduced treatment modality for post-sternotomy mediastinitis. The aim of this study was to compare the mortality rate, the sternal re-infection rate and the length of hospital stay in patients with post-sternotomy mediastinitis after NPWT and conventional treatment.

Methods: We retrospectively analysed 118 patients with post-sternotomy mediastinitis after cardiac surgery. One group of 69 patients was treated with NPWT and the other group of 49 patients with conventional therapy.

Results: There were no major differences between the two groups concerning preoperative data (EuroScore) or primary cardiac surgery (mainly coronary artery bypass grafting). NPWT therapy was found to reduce mortality rate (P=0.005) and sternal re-infection rate (P=0.008) compared with conventional treatment and tended to lead to a shorter length of hospital stay (P=0.08).

Conclusions: NPWT for post-sternotomy mediastinitis demonstrates encouraging clinical results with a reduction of the mortality rate and the sternal re-infection rate compared with conventional treatment. The results support NPWT as the first-line treatment for deep sternal wound infections.