Assistência de enfermagem e o risco para úlceras de pressão medido pela Escala de Braden em unidade de terapia intensiva

The problem facing the incidence of pressure ulcers (UP) in the hospital environment especially in the intensive care unit (ICU), although it is an old and frequent event in our professional practice, it is not notified in the researches as much as it should be. We observed a tendency to invest in therapeutical and in studies about the production of sophisticated new bandages. Few, however, are the investments in research on preventive measures in order to prevent or at least slow down the development of lesions. In this sense, the study aimed to analyze the correlation between nursing care and the risk of developing UP measured by the Braden scale in ICU patients. This is a descriptive study of longitudinal quantitative approach. The project obtained a favourable opinion from the Ethics Committee of HUOL (no 486/10). Data collection was carried out in the Hospital of Unimed in Natal during six months in 2011. The sample was of 32 patients hospitalized in ICU for over four days. The results were processed in SPSS 15.0 for descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. We identified that, only 9.4% of our sample developed UP, being predominantly male, elderly people aged above 60 years, Caucasian, with diagnostic hypothesis at the time of hospitalization of sepsis, were clinical patients, who presented hemodynamic instability, using orotracheal tube (TOT), enteral probe (SNE), vesical probe delay (SVD) and had values of albumin and hemoglobin levels below normal. In addition, these patients had a longer hospital stay, longer usage of TOT, SNE, SVD, increased use of sedation and drain than those who did not develop UP and were all at risk for developing these injuries second Braden scores. 66.7% of the lesions developed were located in the sacral region, limiting the degree I and all patients that developed were considered serious, 100.0% of them have evolved since the death. Small were the differences between the averages of Braden scores between patients with and without UP, 11,9+2,4 against 12,4+2,6 with p = 0.627. The clinical aspects of the patients in the study were instrumental in the development of UP, once, these findings were statistically significant through the Mann-Whitney test, and appropriateness of nursing conduct was decisive for the prevention of pressure ulcers in critical patients, since many were those classified as at risk (28) and few who have developed lesions (03)