Effects of Different Support Surfaces on the Properties Skin After Loading

Plain-language summary

Pressure ulcers are severe injuries and wounds causing a substantial burden on patients, caregivers, and on healthcare systems worldwide. There is common agreement, that effective pressure ulcer prevention is of crucial importance to maintain skin and tissue integrity in individuals at risk. Besides risk assessment and repositioning the use of special pressure ulcer preventive support surfaces are the key interventions in pressure ulcer prevention. Pressure ulcer preventive support surface modify the degree of skin and tissue deformation and/or skin temperature and moisture. Therefore, an association between the type and working mechanism of a pressure ulcer support surface and skin function after loading is highly likely. Furthermore, such a relationship may be used to characterize and/or to quantify the performance pressure ulcer support surfaces in terms of skin protection. The overall aim of this explorative study is to measure skin responses of the two most common pressure ulcer predilection sites (heel, sacral skin) after two hours loading on three different support surfaces and the sternal skin (control area).

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