Comparing the hydrosurgery system to conventional debridement techniques for the treatment of delayed healing wounds: a prospective, randomised clinical trial to investigate clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness.

In these uncertain times of high health care costs, clinicians are looking for cost-effective devices to employ in their everyday practices. In an effort to promote cost-effective and proper wound repair, the hydrosurgical device allows accurate debridement of only unwanted tissue while precisely conserving viable structures for eventual repair. This prospective, randomised study compared procedures using the hydrosurgery system (VERSAJET™) with conventional debridement in order to assess clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness when treating subjects with chronic wounds. A total of 40 subjects were recruited. There was no difference in time to achieve stable wound closure between the treatment groups (P = 0·77). There were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of cost of the first operative procedure (P = 0·28), cost of surgical procedures during the study (P = 0·51), cost of study treatment (P = 0·29) or cost to achieve stable wound closure (P = 0·85). There were no differences in quantitative bacterial counts after debridement with either methods (P = 0·376). However, the time taken for the first excision procedure was significantly faster using the hydrosurgery system (VERSAJET) when compared with conventional debridement (P < 0·001). The total excision time for all procedures was significantly less for the Hydrosurgery group than for the conventional group (P = 0·005). Also, the Hydrosurgery group demonstrated significantly less intraoperative blood loss than conventional group for all procedures (P = 0·003). In this study, although there were no differences in time to stable wound closure or bacterial reduction between the two groups, the hydrosurgery system (VERSAJET) did offer advantages in terms of operative times and intraoperative blood loss and was cost-neutral, despite the handpiece cost.