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Vacuum-assisted wound closure (VAC), a novel innovation in wound-care, has been proven to promote wound healing in human medicine and was recently also described for the treatment of a neck wound in a horse. It ensures adequate wound drainage, a moist woundhealing environment, increased rate of granulation tissue formation, improved blood flow and reduced bacterial count. The results of the application of VAC as a supportive therapy in skin grafting are encouraging in human patients with take rates of grafts above 90%. The question is whether these results can also be obtained in horses. This article reports the clinical application of VAC in combination with the Meek micrografting method in 2 equine patients. The VAC provided adequate wound drainage, good fixation of the graft to the recipient site, limited shear forces and allowed graft acceptance of at least 75% in both patients. Although no control studies were conducted, the clinical results suggest that vacuum-assisted closure stimulates the acceptance of split thickness grafts and accelerates wound healing and may become an essential part of wound treatment in the future.
Rijkenhuizen et al. (Sat,) studied this question.