EUROPEAN PRESSURE ULCER ADVISORY PANEL

Welcome to the latest issue of the EPUAP Review. With only a few months to go before the EPUAP Pisa Conference, this issue of your newsletter highlights the conference programme and details. Remember, abstracts have to be submitted to the Oxford Business Office of the EPUAP by 30th June 2000. The Pisa meeting promises to live up to the expectations created by the first three Open Meetings and so provide a lively, challenging forum for discussion of all topics related to pressure ulcers.

Three main contentious issues are raised in this issue. We have for many years tried to focus attention upon the importance of pressure ulcer prevention. But can we have too much of a good thing? When do we accept that all possible efforts have been made and what residual incidence rate do we accept? If we continue to pour resources into prevention when we have reached that residual rate then we could be using time and money ineffectively. This is a topic EPUAP should and must address. Hopefully the contributions in this issue will spark a lively debate over when (or if) to accept that we have done all we can do to prevent pressure ulcer development.

Once again the topic of support surfaces is considered through the publication of a reference list of over 200 publications related to pressure measurements, and beds and mattresses. Is this list complete? Let us know if you are aware of other references missing from this bibliography. By the time we reach the Pisa conference some attempt will have been made to synthesise this vast amount of information to determine just what (if anything) we gain through performing interface pressure measurements.

Finally we return to that perennial topic ‘does nutritional status affect pressure ulcer development?’ One of the key presentations from last year’s Open Meeting held in Amsterdam is published in this issue. Whilst the paper does not answer whether nutritional impairment helps cause pressure ulcers, it clearly shows that staff in Dutch nursing homes firmly believe this to be true – but yet little attention to remedying nutritional impairments was encountered. Yet again there seems to be a gap between what we believe and what we do!

So once again I would encourage all readers to contribute to your newsletter. Perhaps you could start by sending your thoughts on what you consider we should treat as the limits of pressure ulcer prevention! 

Michael Clark
Editor