Managing real world venous leg ulcers with fetal bovine acellular dermal matrix: a single centre retrospective study

Objective: As compression treatment offers moderate improvement, especially to recurrent venous leg ulcers (VLUs), several alternative therapies using cellular based and/or tissue-derived products (CTPs) have emerged from bovine, porcine, and equine sources. Our aim was to look at the effect of a CTP in ‘real-life’ VLUs. Methods: This study looked at complex patients with chronic, large wounds in a single-centre retrospective review. All patients were treated with fetal bovine acellular dermal matrix (FBADM) for VLUs at our outpatient urban wound care programme. Results: A total of 40 wounds in 33 patients were analysed. At week four, 6% of wounds were closed; at week eight, 9% were closed; at week 12, 25% were closed; and at week 16, 38% of wounds were closed. The median time to wound closure was 67 days (range: 23–100 days) and the median percent wound closure through re-epithelialisation was 11% per week (range: 7–30% per week). At 4 weeks the median area reduction of all wounds was 23.5%, with 40% of ...