Clinical experience with the negative pressure wound dressing.

Between 1997 and 1999, more than 300 patients have been treated using negative pressure wound dressings. The technique has been used successfully to prepare various acute, chronic or infected wounds to accept a skin graft or flap, and to promote graft take at difficult donor sites. The advantages include rapid healing by secondary intention, reduced time to skin grafting, an increase in the rate of graft take and a reduction in donor site complications. The dressing can be applied quickly and easily and there have been no serious complications. Copyright 2000 The British Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons.