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Archived Comments for: A systematic review on the impact of leg ulceration on patients' quality of life

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  1. QOL in Leg ulceration: too many missing studies

    Peter Franks, Thames Valley University

    27 July 2007

    While I applaud the notion of a systematic review of quality of life in leg ulceration, I was disappointed to observe just one paper from our research team had made it into the review. While systematic reviews are by definition systematic, they are not necessarily as inclusive as they could be. We have been working in this area for a number of years and have published widely. I suggest the authors should look at their search strategy as it is clearly not able to pick ours (and other) key studies. For your reference the folliowing papers have appeared in peer reviewed journals:

    Franks PJ, Moffatt CJ, Oldroyd M, Bosanquet N, Connolly M, Greenhalgh RM,

    McCollum CN (1994) “Community leg ulcer clinics: Effect on quality of life.”

    Phlebology 9 (2): 83-86.

    Franks PJ, Bosanquet N, Brown D, Straub J, Harper DR, Ruckley CV (1999)

    “Perceived health in a randomised trial of treatment for chronic venous ulceration.”

    Eur. J. Vasc. Endovasc. Surg. 17 (2): 155-159.

    Franks PJ, Moffatt CJ, Connolly M, Fielden S, Ellison DA, Groarke L, McCollum CN (1999). “Quality of life in venous ulceration: a randomised trial of two bandage systems.” Phlebology 14 (3): 95-99.

    Franks PJ, Moffatt CJ (2001)

    “Health related quality of life in patients with venous ulceration: use of the Nottingham Health Profile.”

    Quality of Life Research 10 (8): 693-700.

    Franks PJ, McCullagh L, Moffatt CJ (2003)

    “Assessing quality of life in patients with chronic leg ulceration using the Medical Outcomes Short Form-36 questionnaire.”

    Ostomy/ Wound Management. 49 (2): 26-37.

    Franks PJ, Moody M, Moffatt CJ, Patton J, Bradley L, Chaloner D, Stevens J, Stevens J, Lewis C. (2004). “Quality of life in a trial of short stretch versus four layer bandaging in the management of chronic venous ulceration.”

    Phlebology 19 (2): 87-91

    Franks PJ, Moffatt CJ, Doherty DC, Smithdale R, Martin R (2006)

    “Longer term changes in quality of life in chronic leg ulceration.”

    Wound Repair & Regeneration: 14; 536-541

    Franks PJ, Moffatt CJ (2006). Do clinical and social factors predict quality of life in leg ulceration? Int J Low Extrem Wounds.: 5 (4). 236-43

    Hareendran A, Doll H, Wild DJ, Moffatt CJ, Musgrove E, Wheatley C, Franks PJ (2007). “The Venous Leg Ulcer Quality of Life (VLU-QoL) questionnaire: Development and Psychometric Validation.” Wound Repair & Regeneration. 15(4); 465-473

    Competing interests

    I have authored a number of papers on quality of life in leg ulceration that have not appeared in the systematic review

  2. Inappropriate criticism

    Oliver, Rudolf Herber, University of Witten/Herdecke

    22 January 2008

    While we welcome any constructive criticism to improve the quality of our systematic review, we were somewhat disappointed to observe that our review has not been read carefully enough. Franks demurs the missing of too many of his studies which unfortunately, however, did not meet our inclusion criteria as stated in the method section. There it says that articles were excluded if they investigated the impact of specific treatments (e.g. bandaging systems) or settings (e.g. leg ulcer clinics) on QoL. The rationale for doing this can be found in the discussion section under the heading “Weaknesses and strengths of this review”.

    Competing interests

    I am the principle author of the review.

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