Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government why NHS England promotes compression dressings as the treatment for venous leg ulcers.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have advised that compression therapy is an evidencebased venous leg ulcer treatment. A Cochrane systematic review summarised all the available evidence for compression as a treatment for venous leg ulcers, which shows that people with venous leg ulcers are more likely to heal if they receive compression than if they do not.

Further research funded by the National Institute for Health Research has shown that compression stockings are as effective as compression bandages for healing venous leg ulcers and are more cost-effective, and that a particular type of compression bandage (the four layer bandage) is more effective at healing ulcers than another type (the short-stretch bandage).