The objective of this review was to synthesise the literature and evaluate the incidence, prevalence and severity of medical device-related pressure ulcers (MDRPU) in adult intensive care patients.

Electronic databases and additional grey literature were searched for publications between 2000 and 2017. Outcome measures included cumulative incidence or incidence rate, point prevalence or period prevalence as a primary outcome and the severity and location of the pressure ulcer (PU) as secondary outcome measures. Included studies were assessed for risk of bias using a nine-item checklist for prevalence studies. The heterogeneity was evaluated using 1² statistic.

We included 13 studies in this review. Prevalence was reported more frequently than incidence. Pooled data demonstrated a high variation in the incidence and prevalence rates ranging from 0.9% to 41.2% in incidence and 1.4% to 121% in prevalence. Heterogeneity was high. Mucosal pressure injuries were the most common stage reported in the incidence studies whereas category II followed by category I were most commonly reported in the prevalence studies. In the incidence studies, the most common location was the ear and in the prevalence studies it was the nose.

While MDRPU are common in intensive care patients, it is an understudied area. Inconsistency in the staging of MDRPU, along with variations in data collection methods, study design and reporting affect the reported incidence and prevalence rates. Standardisation of data reporting and collection method is essential for pooling of future studies.