Advice

Search strategy and evidence selection

Search strategy and evidence selection

Search strategy

The following search strategy was used to search Ovid MEDLINE (R) 1946 to November week 1:

1 A fresh way to treat venous leg.m_titl.

2 Comparison of elastic versus nonelastic.m_titl.

3 Meeting the challenges of delivering leg ulcer services.m_titl.

4 Juxta CURES: compression for healing venous leg ulcers.m_titl.

5 (Compression therapy in mixed ulcers increases venous output and arterial perfusion).m_titl.

6 Juxta CURES: An innovative.m_titl.

7 Juxta CURES: compression.m_titl.

8 or/1-7

9 exp Compression Bandages/

10 Varicose Ulcer/th [Therapy]

11 9 and 10

12 juxta cures.tw.

13 (compression adj5 venous adj3 ulcer*).tw.

14 (compression adj5 varicose adj3 ulcer*).tw.

15 11 or 12 or 13 or 14

16 8 and 15

Similar search strategies were adapted for Medline in Process, Embase, PsycInfo, Cochrane Library (all components), Pubmed, HEED, NHS Evidence and Web of Science. The searches returned a total of 669 references after duplicate removal.

Evidence selection

Retrieved results were independently sifted by 2 researchers using the selection criteria below, and disagreements discussed and resolved.

  • Population: Patients with venous stasis ulcers; venous insufficiency; post thrombotic syndrome; dependent oedema.

  • Intervention: Juxta CURES.

  • Comparator: Compression therapy.

  • Outcomes:

    • change in wound size

    • time to healing

    • patient tolerability/acceptability

    • patient compliance

    • clinician assessment

    • quality of life

    • frequency of dressing changes

    • treatment costs

    • maceration of surrounding areas

    • adverse events

    • pain

    • infection rates.

Following the first sift 654 records were removed based on the following criteria:

  • non-English language studies

  • not relevant to selection criteria

  • animal studies

  • review articles and protocols.

Full articles were retrieved for the remaining 15 studies. Several articles were known to be published in Wounds UK which is not indexed in the databases; therefore Google Scholar was used to search for Juxta Cures in Wounds UK resulting in 1 additional paper. The grey literature also resulted in one additional paper. Additionally 19 articles and conference posters were provided by the manufacturer or were available on their website. At this stage a total of 31 references were available to consider for inclusion. Due to the paucity of data all studies meeting the selection criteria were considered for inclusion. Ultimately 9 references met the criteria and were included in this briefing. Four of these are full text papers (Bianchi et al. 2013; Dowsett and Elson 2013; Lawrence 2014a and Nugent et al. 2013); 4 are poster presentations (Davies 2013; Elson 2012; Harris 2013; Oates et al. 2013) and 1 an abstract (Lurie et al. 2012). A tenth study (Lawrence 2014b) also met the selection criteria but did not contain any quantitative data and was therefore excluded.