Effect of wound protectors in reducing the incidence of surgical site wound infection in lower gastrointestinal surgery: A meta‐analysis

We performed a meta‐analysis to evaluate the effect of wound protectors in reducing the incidence of surgical site wound infection in lower gastrointestinal surgery. A systematic literature search up to June 2022 was performed and 6026 subjects with lower gastrointestinal surgery at the baseline of the studies; 3090 of them were using the wound protector, and 2936 were using no wound protector. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the effect of wound protectors in reducing the incidence of surgical site wound infection in lower gastrointestinal surgery using the dichotomous methods with a random or fixed‐effect model. The surgical site wound infection was significantly lower with single‐ring wound protectors (OR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.39‐0.83, P = .004), and dual‐ring wound protectors (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.35‐0.56, P < .001) in subjects with lower gastrointestinal surgery compared with no wound protector. The surgical site wound infection was significantly lower with single‐ring wound protectors, and dual‐ring wound protectors in subjects with lower gastrointestinal surgery compared with no wound protector. The analysis of outcomes should be with caution because of the low sample size of 5 out of 28 studies in the meta‐analysis and a low number of studies in certain comparisons.