Preoperative skin cleansing with chlorhexidine-alcohol reduces surgical site infection after clean-contaminated surgery compared with povidone-iodine.

摘要

More than 30 million operative procedures are performed each year in the USA.1 Despite the implementation of a bundle of preventive measures such as preoperative use of hair clippers or no hair removal (as opposed to shaving), initial administration of perioperative antibiotics within 1 hour before surgery, and maintenance of normother-mia, normoglycaemia and hyperoxia during surgery and for the first 2 hours after surgery, between 300 000 and 500 000 patients develop a surgical site infection (SSI). These infections increase length of hospital stay, hospital costs and mortality.