Dry skin and pressure ulcer risk: A multi-center cross-sectional prevalence study in German hospitals and nursing homes
Section snippets
What is already known about the topic?
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Skin status is regarded as an important risk factor in pressure ulcer development.
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The particular impact of dry skin on pressure ulcer development at pressure ulcer predilection areas has not been investigated so far.
What this paper adds
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Dry skin at feet seems to be a relevant risk factor for pressure ulcer development at heel/ankle
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Skin dryness at the sacral skin does not seem to increase pressure ulcer risk.
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There seem to be differences in sacral and heel pressure ulcer development.
Study design and setting
The data used in this study is based on two multicenter descriptive cross-sectional prevalence studies in 2014 and 2015, which have been performed annually by the Department of Nursing Science at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Lahmann et al., 2005) since 2001. The study design is based on a similar study conducted in The Netherlands since 1999 (Bours et al., 1999) and methods have been previously described (Kottner et al., 2009b, Lahmann et al., 2005). In brief, all hospitals and
Participants
In total, 13 hospitals and 30 nursing homes participated in both years, which resulted in 3837 hospital patients and nursing home residents participating in this study. On average, 89 participants per institution were recruited. The smallest number of participants per institution was 10, the highest 396. In the hospitals the response rate was 68% and 87% in the nursing homes (Fig. 1).
Sample characteristics are shown in Table 1. The mean age was 81.4 (SD 12.1) years in nursing homes versus 69.7
Key results and interpretation
Using data from two German wide prevalence studies, which were performed in 2014 and 2015 by the Department of Nursing Science at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Lahmann et al., 2005), this study aimed to investigate possible associations between dry skin and pressure ulcers. Overall 2.4% of the study population was affected by at least one pressure ulcer category 2–4 and DTI. The bivariate comparisons showed that the prevalence of dry skin was significantly higher in the group
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
Medical Association of Berlin (Eth-837-262/00).
Funding
This study was supported by the Clinical Research Center for Hair and Skin Science and the Department of Nursing Science of the Charité- Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
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