Effect of rapid rehabilitation care on surgical site wound infection and pain in patients with intertrochanteric femoral fractures: A meta-analysis

Abstract

This study examines the effects of rapid rehabilitation on surgical site wound infections and pain in patients with intertrochanteric femoral fractures. A computerised search was conducted for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on rapid rehabilitation care in patients undergoing surgery for intertrochanteric femoral fractures published in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, China Biomedical Literature Database, Wanfang Database, VIP, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of Science. The search was conducted from the time of the database construction to August 2023. Two investigators independently performed literature screening, data extraction and quality assessment based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Meta-analysis was performed via RevMan 5.4 software. Encompassing 21 studies involving 2004 patients, with 1007 patients receiving rapid rehabilitation care and 997 receiving routine care, our analysis revealed that rapid rehabilitation care significantly reduced postoperative complications (odds ratio [OR] = 0.24, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.17–0.33, p < 0.001), wound infections (OR = 0.30, 95% CI: 0.14–0.65, p = 0.002) and hospital stay (mean difference [MD] = −5.23, 95% CI: −6.03 to −4.43, p < 0.001). Moreover, compared with routine care, it notably improved wound pain (MD = −1.51, 95% CI: −1.98 to −1.05, p < 0.001) in patients undergoing surgery for intertrochanteric femoral fractures. Our findings underscore the effectiveness of rapid rehabilitation care in reducing wound pain, postoperative complications and wound infections among patients with intertrochanteric femoral fractures.