Effectiveness of Vibration Therapy for Hard-to-Heal Wounds in Clinical Study: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Diminished peripheral blood flow at the wound site remains a key hindrance to effective wound healing. Hard-to-heal wounds are defined as wounds that fail to heal with standard therapy. Vibration therapy may help promote the healing of hard-to-heal wounds such as pressure injuries, diabetic foot ulcers, and venous leg ulcers by improving blood flow. However, evidence supporting its effectiveness on hard-to-heal wounds is inadequate. This scoping review focuses on studying the effectiveness of vibration therapy for healing hard-to-heal wounds by compiling all available research. The following databases were systematically reviewed from 1980 to 2023: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Ichu-shi-Web, IEEE, CINAHL, Scopus, Web of Science, and PEDro. The search terms included "wound", "ulcer", "hard-to-heal", "vibration therapy", and "wound healing". Two authors independently screened the articles based on inclusion criteria, and the lead author performed data extraction and analysis. A total of 1036 articles were identified, and five articles were eligible to be included in this review. The results suggested that low-frequency and low-intensity vibration therapies helped effectively treat wounds (including pressure injuries, diabetic foot ulcers, and venous leg ulcers) by improving blood flow, relieving pain, reducing exudate, removing necrotic tissue, and increasing the expression of nitric oxide associated with wound healing. This study will inform the treatment choices of clinicians who manage patients with hard-to-heal wounds and researchers who plan to conduct clinical trials using vibration therapy. Further studies on vibration therapy must be performed to gather evidence to support the clinical application of vibration therapy to improve healing time and outcomes in individuals with hard-to-heal wounds.