A systematic review of clinical effectiveness of wound edge protector devices in reducing surgical site infections in patients undergoing abdominal surgery

This article highlights the clinical effectiveness of wound edge protector devices (WEPD) in preventing the post-operative surgical site infections (SSI) in patients undergoing abdominal surgery. Using the principles of meta-analysis and systematic review as recommended by the Cochrane Collaboration, the data from selected randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) were analysed to generate summated outcome and presented in the form of odds ratio (OR). Eighteen RCTs on 3808 reported the effectiveness of WEPD in patients undergoing abdominal surgery. The use of WEPD was associated with the reduced incidence of overall SSI (OR 0.59; 95% CI 0.43-0.81; z = 3.30; p<0.001) and superficial SSI (OR 0.42; 95% CI 0.18-0.95; z = 2.09; p< 0.04). In addition, WEPD also successfully reduced the risk of SSI in clean-contaminated wounds (OR 0.67; 95% CI 0.46-0.98; z = 2.06; p<0.04) as well as in contaminated wounds (OR 0.24; 95% CI 0.12-0.49; z = 3.96; p<0.0001). WEPD seems to be an effective intervention to reduce the risk of post-operative SSI in patients undergoing abdominal surgery.