Interventions for helping people adhere to compression treatments for venous leg ulceration (Review)

Chronic venous ulcer healing is a complex clinical problem that requires intervention from skilled, costly, multidisciplinary wound care teams. Compression therapy has been shown to help heal venous ulcers and to reduce the risk of recurrence. It is not known which interventions help people adhere to compression treatments. Objectives: To assess the benefits and harms of interventions designed to help people adhere to venous leg ulcer compression therapy, and thus improve healing of venous leg ulcers and prevent their recurrence after healing.Search methods In May 2013 we searched The Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register; The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials(CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library); Ovid MEDLINE; Ovid MEDLINE (In-Process Other Non-Indexed Citations); Ovid EMBASE; EBSCO CINAHL; trial registries, and reference lists of relevant publications for published and ongoing trials. There were no language or publication date restrictions. Selection criteria: We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of interventions that help people with venous leg ulcers adhere to compression treatments compared with usual care, or no intervention, or another active intervention. Our main outcomes were number of people with ulcers healed, recurrence, time to complete healing, quality of life, pain, adherence to compression therapy and number of people with adverse events. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors independently selected studies for inclusion, extracted data, assessed the risk of bias of each included trial, and assessed overall quality of evidence for the main outcomes in "Summary of findings" tables.