1Postgraduate Student, Department of General Surgery, Chettinad Hospital and Research Institute, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Kelambakkam – 603103, Tamil Nadu, India
2Assistant Professor, Department of General Surgery, Chettinad Hospital and Research Institute, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education (CARE), Kelambakkam – 603103, Tamil Nadu, India
3Professor, Department of General Surgery, Chettinad Hospital and Research Institute, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education (CARE), Kelambakkam – 603103, Tamil Nadu, India
Background: Venous leg ulcers (VLUs) are the most common type of chronic leg ulcer, representing 70-85% of all chronic leg ulcers. Compression therapy is the cornerstone of treatment for VLUs, but there are limited comparative data on four-layer compression bandaging versus conventional dressings in resource-limited clinical settings.
Objectives: To evaluate the clinical efficacy of four-layer compression bandages compared with conventional dressings on wound healing outcomes in patients with venous leg ulcers treated in clinical practice.
Methods: A retrospective observational cohort study was conducted over a four-month period from September 2025 to December 2025 in the General Surgery department at the Chettinad Medical College in Chennai, India. The medical records of 20 adult patients with duplex confirmed chronic venous leg ulcers were reviewed. Patients will be divided into two groups based on how they were treated (four-layer bandaging, n=10; conventional dressing, n=10). Wound healing outcomes of interest will be time to heal, proportion of healed patients, percentage of wound size reduction, and frequency of dressing change/hospital visits between the treatment groups will be compared using Student's t-test (for continuous data) and chi-square test (for categorical data).
Results: Patients in the four-layer compression bandage group had significantly higher complete healing rates (80% vs 40%; p=0.04), less mean time to heal (6.8±1.9 weeks vs 11.4±2.7 weeks; p=0.001), and greater percentage of ulcer size reduction (74.3% vs 43.6%; p=0.002) compared to patients treated with conventional dressings. In addition, there were significantly fewer dressing changes/hospital visits in the four-layer bandaging group compared with the conventional dressing group (p<0.001).
Conclusions: The results of this study show that four-layer compression bandages provide superior healing outcomes than conventional dressings for patients with venous leg ulcers and that the four-layer compression bandage can significantly decrease the amount of time, the number of visits to the hospital, and frequency of dressing changes for VLUs. These findings support increasing the incorporation of four-layer compression systems into the regular clinical practice of health care providers.
Keywords: Venous leg ulcers, four-layer bandaging, compression therapy, conventional dressing, wound healing, chronic venous insufficiency.
How to cite this article: PA J, Kumar L, Prasath ER, Prabakar A, Pradeep. A Retrospective Observational Study Comparing The Efficacy Of Four-Layer Bandaging Versus Conventional Dressing For The Treatment Of Venous Leg Ulcers. Int J Drug Deliv Technol. 2026;16(1s): 1059-1065. DOI: 10.25258/ijddt.16.1s.117
Source of support: Nil.
Conflict of interest: None