informed consent wound closure information

[malernee]

as you can see from this study when to suture a wound and when to leave it open may not have anything to do about whether it gets infected. Surgical sites in animal surgery are often left open.


Wounds
Bites (mammalian)
Search date November 2003
Iara Marques de Medeiros and Humberto Saconato
Primary wound closure
One poor quality RCT comparing primary wound closure with no closure in people with dog bites found no significant difference in the incidence of infection, but the RCT was too small to exclude clinically important effects.

Benefits
Harms
Comment

We found no systematic review. We found one RCT comparing primary wound closure versus no closure (96 people bitten by dogs in the preceding 24 hours).[13] All wounds were debrided and irrigated, and tetanus immunisation was updated, but no antibiotic prophylaxis was given. In uncomplicated lacerations, closure was performed by an experienced nurse; in complicated lacerations closure was performed by a specialist physician. The RCT found no difference in the incidence of infection with closed compared with open wounds (7/92 [8%] with closed v 6/77 [8%] with open; RR 0.98, 95% CI 0.33 to 2.62; timescale not reported). There were significantly more infections of the hand compared with the rest of the body (69% v 31% of body), but there was no difference between closure and non-closure groups in the rate of hand infection (5/9 [56%] with closure v 4/9 [44%] with non-closure).

REFERENCES
Maimaris C, Quinton DN. Dog-bite lacerations: a controlled trial of primary wound closure. Arch Emerg Med 1988;5:156–161. [PubMed]