Electrocautery Versus Scalpel for Skin Incisions

St. Paul's Hospital, Canada

Status: Completed

Conditions: Post-operative Pain; Wound Complication; Surgical Wound Infection

Treatments: Procedure: Scalpel; Procedure: Electrocautery

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01496404

H11-02242

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this research project is to compare electrocautery to scalpel for laparotomy skin incisions, with the following objectives:

1. To investigate whether electrocautery produces a cosmetically inferior surgical scar.
2. To compare the rates of wound infection with each technique.
3. To determine if electrocautery results in less postoperative pain. Our null hypothesis is that electrocautery is equivalent to scalpel for creating skin incisions; with respect to wound cosmesis, wound infection rate, and post-operative pain.

Enrollment: 66 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 19+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Patients over 19 years old
• bowel resection surgery
• incision is 3cm or larger

Exclusion criteria

• Diagnosed with a connective tissue disease (e.g. Systemic lupus, scleroderma, polymyositis, dermatomyositis, Marfan syndrome, Ehler's Danlos, etc.)
• The site of planned surgery has a previous surgical scar.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

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66 participants in 2 patient groups

Electrocautery

Experimental group

Description:

Epidermis and dermis incised with cutting setting of electrocautery.

Treatment:

Procedure: Electrocautery

Scalpel

Active Comparator group

Description:

Control, incision of epidermis and dermis with scalpel.

Treatment:

Procedure: Scalpel