• Manuel López-Cano, Miquel Kraft, Anna Curell, Mireia Puig-Asensio, José Balibrea, Manuel Armengol-Carrasco, and Josep M García-Alamino.
• Department of General Surgery, Abdominal Wall Surgery Unit and General and Digestive Surgery Research Group, Institut de Recerca Vall d'Hebron (VHIR), Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Passeig Vall d'Hebron 119-129, 08035, Barcelona, Spain. mlpezcano@gmail.com.
• World J Surg. 2019 Feb 1; 43 (2): 374-384.

BackgroundPovidone iodine (PVI) is a widely used antiseptic solution among surgeons. A meta-analysis based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was conducted to establish whether application of PVI before wound closure could reduce surgical site infection (SSI) rates.MethodsSystematic review of MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, and Web of Science databases from inception to September 2017, with no language restrictions. Only RCTs were retrieved. The primary outcome was the SSI rate. Meta-analysis was complemented with trial sequential analysis (TSA).ResultsA total of 7601 patients collected from 16 RCTs were analyzed. A reduction in overall SSI rate was found (RR 0.64, 95% CI 0.48-0.85, P = 0.002, I2 = 65%), which was attributed to patients undergoing elective operations (n = 2358) and mixed elective/urgent operations (n = 2019). When RCTs of uncertain quality (n = 9) were excluded, the use of PVI before wound closure (n = 4322 patients) was not associated with a significant reduction of SSI (RR 0.81, 95% CI 0.55-1.20, P = 0.29, I2 = 51%) and was only significant in clean wounds (RR 0.25, 95% CI 0.09-0.70, P = 0.008, I2 = 0%). For the primary outcome, the TSA calculation using a relative risk reduction of 19% and an 11% proportion of control event rate (CER) with 51% of I2, the accrued information size (n = 4322) was 32.8% of the estimated optimal information size (n = 13,148).ConclusionsThere is no conclusive evidence for a strong recommendation of topical PVI before wound closure to prevent SSI.

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