Interventions:
The dressings were briefly reported, but their mechanisms of action were not described and the manufacturers' information documents should be consulted. The patients recruited to the pilot study might be similar to and representative of those of other settings.
Effectiveness/benefits:
The evidence of clinical effectiveness for the two options was weak. The study was a pilot open trial and the investigators had difficulty recruiting patients. No statistical analysis of the clinical outcomes was applied because the sample size was insufficient to provide meaningful data. The measurement of the clinical endpoints of healed and partly healed was not described and is likely to have been subjective. An open-label trial could be subject to other unknown biases.
Costs:
The costs were for a maximum seven-day wear time, but the manufacturers of Mepitel-Mepilex suggested that a 14-day wear time was possible. They did not include the remaining dressing costs for patients whose skin tears were not healed after seven days up to the four-week study period and the costs were, therefore, censored. The items included in the cost analysis were limited; nursing care and other health resources for wound care were omitted. The price year was not stated and no sensitivity analyses were undertaken.
Analysis and results:
The health outcomes and costs were not combined into incremental cost-effectiveness ratios. Sensitivity analyses were not undertaken and no measure of uncertainty around the results was presented. The cost analysis was secondary to the clinical outcomes of this small open-label pilot trial.
Concluding remarks:
The methods and results were minimally reported and were not comprehensive as the study was a small open-label pilot trial. The conclusions made by the authors are not supported by the data presented.