Author interview: Suite of reviews on pressure ulcers

Pressure ulcers, also known as pressure sores or bed sores, are wounds to the skin and underlying tissue caused by prolonged pressure or rubbing. People who have mobility problems or who lie in bed for long periods are at risk of developing pressure ulcers.Cochrane Wounds has recently published a suite of reviews on this topic, lead author Chunhu Shi tells us about these reviews.How did this suite of reviews come about?The relative effectiveness of different types of beds and mattresses (support surfaces) for preventing pressure ulcers prevention came out as a “top uncertainty” in a priory setting exercise involving patients, carers and health care professionals. We were awarded funding from the National Institute for Health Research to review the research on this topic.In the beginning, we thought we would update an existing, large Cochrane review,Support surfaces for pressure ulcer prevention. This review was one of our most downloaded, with 11,835 downloads in 2019. However, we were concerned that the existing review was too large and difficult for readers to navigate. Furthermore, its size and complexity made it difficult to update. We therefore decided to split the review into four new review titles plus an overview that would include a network meta-analysis, to pull all comparisons together.Before embarking on the splitting and restructure of the review, we consulted users of our reviews via an online survey. In the survey we explained the rationale for splitting th...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news