A prospective randomised study comparing the jubilee dressing method to a standard adhesive dressing for total hip and knee replacements.

AIM OF THE STUDY

It is important to reduce potential wound complications in total hip and total knee arthroplasty procedures. The purpose of this study was to compare the jubilee dressing method to a standard adhesive dressing.

METHOD

124 patients (62 total hip replacements and 62 total knee replacements) were randomly selected to have either a standard adhesive dressing or jubilee method dressing. The number of dressing changes, incidence of blistering, leakage, appearance of inflammation, infection rate and the average stay in hospital was recorded for each patient.

RESULTS

The jubilee dressing significantly reduced the rate of blistering, leakage and number of dressing changes when compare to a traditional adhesive dressing (p < 0.05). The rate of inflammation and average length of stay in hospital was not significantly different between the two groups.

CONCLUSION

The authors recommend the use of this dressing for total hip and total knee arthroplasty procedures due to the associated lower complication rate.