A meta‐analysis of the risk factors for surgical site infection in patients with colorectal cancer

Abstract

The purpose of the meta‐analysis was to evaluate and compare the surgical site infection (SSI) risk factors in patients with colorectal cancer (CC). The results of this meta‐analysis were analysed, and the odds ratio (OR) and mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using dichotomous or contentious random or fixed‐effect models. For the current meta‐analysis, 23 examinations spanning from 2001 to 2023 were included, encompassing 89 859 cases of CC. Clean‐contaminated surgical site wounds had significantly lower infections (OR, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.20–0.64, p < 0.001) compared to contaminated surgical site wounds in patients with CCs. Males had significantly higher SSIs (OR, 1.18; 95% CI, 1.12–1.24, p < 0.001) compared to females in patients with CC. American Society of Anesthesiology score ≥3 h had a significantly higher SSI (OR, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.18–1.71, p < 0.001) compared to <3 score in patients with CCs. Body mass index ≥25 had significantly higher SSIs (OR, 1.54; 95% CI, 1.11–2.14, p = 0.01) compared to <25 in patients with CCs. The presence of stoma creation had a significantly higher SSI rate (OR, 2.28; 95% CI, 1.37–3.79, p = 0.001) compared to its absence in patients with CC. Laparoscopic surgery had significantly lower SSIs (OR, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.59–0.78, p < 0.001) compared to open surgery in patients with CC. The presence of diabetes mellitus had a significantly higher SSI rate (OR, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.15–1.33, p < 0.001) compared to its absence in patients with CCs. No significant difference was found in SSI rate in patients with CCs between <3 and ≥3 h of operative time (OR, 1.07; 95% CI, 0.75–1.51, p = 0.72), between the presence and absence of blood transfusion (OR, 1.60; 95% CI, 0.69–3.66, p = 0.27) and between the presence and absence of previous laparotomies (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 0.93–2.32, p = 0.10). The examined data revealed that contaminated wounds, male sex, an American Society of Anesthesiology score ≥3 h, a body mass index ≥25, stoma creation, open surgery and diabetes mellitus are all risk factors for SSIs in patients with CC. However, operative time, blood transfusion and previous laparotomies were not found to be risk factors for SSIs in patients with CC. However, given that several comparisons had a small number of chosen research, consideration should be given to their values.

The impact of diabetes on postoperative infections in colorectal cancer: A meta-analysis

“…When P＞0.1, I 2 ≤30% indicated low heterogeneity between studies, 30% < I 2 ≤ 50% indicated moderate heterogeneity, and I 2 > 50% indicated high heterogeneity. For low and moderate heterogeneity, a fixed-effects model was used; for high heterogeneity, a randomeffects model was adopted [8,9]. Funnel plots and Egger's test were used to analyze publication bias.…”

“…Unrelated literature was filtered out by reading the titles, and two researchers independently extracted the characteristics of included studies (including authors, publication years, total number of participants, study countries, numbers of patients with and without diseases, etc.). The Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale (NOS) was used for quality assessment of the included literature [8,9] .…”