Effectiveness and Safety of Compound Polymyxin B Ointment in Treatment of Burn Wounds: A Meta-analysis

Burn injuries represent a global public health concern. The guidelines for burn care mention that the treatment of burn injuries depends on the type of burn injury, depth of tissue, area of wounds, and site on the body. At present, several topical antimicrobial agents are used in the treatment of burn wounds as a first choice. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the compound polymyxin B topical agents for the treatment of burn wounds. PubMed, Web of Science, ProQuest, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases were searched for articles published until January 2021. The studies that conducted clinical trials comparing compound polymyxin B ointment with other treatment reagents for burn wound treatment were included. A total of three outcomes, which were investigator-assessed clinical response, including mortality, bacterial counts, efficacy and safety were included for analysis in this study. In total, 12 randomized controlled trials, 1 clinical trial, 2 prospective studies, and 1 retrospective study were extracted. The result of mortality showed no significant difference (risk ratio [RR]: 0.70, 95% CI: 0.21–2.31, P = .56); wound healing revealed an RR of 1.59 (95% CI: 1.40–1.81, P < .001); time to heal revealed a mean difference of −5.09 (95% CI: −6.31 to −3.86) days (P < .001); scar incidence was not significantly lower in the treatment group (RR: 0.70, 95% CI: 0.38–1.30, P = .26); and adverse event incidence was significantly lower in the treatment group (RR: 0.26, 95% CI: 0.09–0.72, P < .01). The compound polymyxin B ointment shows the effectiveness of increase in the wound healing and accelerates the time of healing with fewer adverse effects.