ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Injury Prevention and Control
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1521948
Comparative effectiveness of skin interface pressure combined with skin temperature monitoring in paraplegic patients in paraplegia Effectiveness of skin interface pressure and temperature monitoring for pressure injury prevention in paraplegic patients: A Comparative Study
Provisionally accepted
- Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
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Purpose: Studies indicate that the conventional practice of turning patients every 2 hours has certain limitations in preventing pressure injuries among paraplegic patients.This study aimed to explore the application effect of skin interface pressure combined with skin temperature monitoring to prevent pressure injury in paraplegic patients.Methods: Using convenience sampling, 89 paraplegic patients from the Rehabilitation, Orthopaedics, Wound Centre, and Neurology departments of two tertiary hospitals in Wenzhou (Jan 2021-Jul 2023) were randomly assigned to the study and control groups. The study group received infrared thermography and portable pressure/temperature monitoring at pressure points, guiding personalized position management plans, while the control group received routine disease treatment and standard pressure injury protection. Follow-up assessments were conducted at 3, 6, and 12 months post-intervention for both groups. Data collected included pressure injury incidence rates at these three time points, patient satisfaction scores, nursing time spent on positioning management during hospitalization, and 3 mean daily frequency of position changes.The incidence of pressure injury in the study group and the control group at 3, 6 and 12 months after the end of the trial was 2.3% vs. 6.7% (P=0.616), 4.5% vs.13.3% (P=0.266), and 4.5% vs. 20% (P=0.027), respectively. Spearman's correlation analysis found that the sacrococcygeal pressure values of paraplegic patients were positively correlated with the occurrence of pressure injuries (r=0.676, P=0.001), while the skin temperature values were negatively correlated with pressure injuries (r=-0.701, P<0.001). The degrees of patient's satisfaction on nursing in the study group were significantly higher than that of the control group (P=0.032). Furthermore, the nursing workload of the study group was significantly less than that of the control group (all P<0.001).: This study implied that personalized positioning guided by real-time sacral pressure and skin temperature monitoring significantly reduced long-term PI incidence in paraplegic patients. Pressure and temperature may serve as validated early-warning indicators. Our findings supported replacing rigid 2-hour schedules with individualized protocols.
Keywords: Paraplegia, Pressure injury, Postural management, Skin interface pressure, Skin Temperature, pressure ulcer prevention
Received: 03 Nov 2024; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Miao, Lin, Ni, Yin, Lv, Huang, Jiang and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Huifen Zhou, zhouhuifen2562@163.com
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