Image of male nurse pushing senior woman in a wheelchair in nursing facility

The prevalence of pressure injuries acquired in long-term care facilities has risen in recent years, according to the findings of the International Pressure Ulcer Prevalence survey.

The survey, which was published online this week in the Journal of Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nursing, examined a sample of more than 900,000 patients in the United States across healthcare settings between 2006 and 2015.

Overall, pressure injury rates fell from 13.5% in 2006 to 9.3% in 2015 across all care settings. Prevalence of facility-acquired pressure ulcers dropped from slightly over 6% in 2006 to a range around 3% between 2013 and 2015. Dropping the rate in half over the past decade is likely due to improved pressure injury prevention practices instead of changes to patient risk factors, researchers noted.

The prevalence of facility-acquired pressure injuries in long-term care facilities was found to be on the rise in recent years, increasing from 3.8% in 2013 to 5.4% in 2015, although the statistics showed no “clear-cut directional trends,” researchers said. Rehabilitation facilities showed a slight change in rate facility-acquired pressure injuries, increasing .2% to 2.8% over the last three years of the survey.

Acute care facilities showed the most significant drops in injury prevalence, with a decrease to 2.9% in 2015 from double that a decade before.