Wound Dressings in Veterinary Small Animal Medicine - A systematic review

The purpose of this diploma thesis was to show that in veterinary clinical research, only 30% of the currently published records are high-quality trials with well- designed protocols that can be classified as gold or higher. To give an overview of the topic, the classification of wounds was described and a short summary about current wound management methods was given. To understand the different wound dressings that were detailed in the included publications, it was also necessary to explain the most common wound dressings used in small animal medicine and to compare the possible uses. In this thesis, all records were included that investigated the effect of different wound dressing materials in small animal medicine, especially in dogs and cats. In vivo publications in English or German were included. The literature was found through the use of several search engines such as pubmed, scopus, google scholar and vetmedseeker. By searching through this databases, it was possible to identify 126 publications that matched the used keywords. After a rough analysis, nearly 81% of these records could be excluded due to several factors like being written in the wrong language. Ultimately, 26 publications could be included and were analyzed based on the guidelines definded by GRADE and classified into level based on Santesso et al. (2006). It became clear, that it is not possible to achieve the evidence level standards that are set in human medicine, so an adjustment to the current evidence classes was made. Yet most of the publications did not fulfill the criteria, despite having well- designed study protocols. These publications, with their great study-design and their objective investigation methods, showed that even in the veterinary field, it is possible to achieve a scienticically significant outcome. During the course of this systematic review, the hypothesis that was initially set was confirmed, because none of the included papers could achieve gold level or higher.