Abstract
Background: Much has been published in current years about the impact of diabetes on increased rates of surgical site infection (SSI) and the potentially related impact of hyperglycemia on SSI. Surgical site infections are envisioned to have an annual financial impact of extra than 3 billion dollars nationally and are the largest contributor to the general value of healthcare-associated infections. Aim: This work aims to determine the risk of Surgical Site Infection (SSI) in Diabetes Mellitus (DM) patients. Materials and Methods: A systematic search was performed over different medical databases to identify studies, which studied the outcome of the SSI group versus the Non-SSI group of DM patients. Using the meta-analysis process, either with fixed or random-effects models, we conducted a meta-analysis on the prevalence of SSI in diabetic patients as a primary outcome, and on the risk of DM in SSI patients in comparison to non-SSI patients as a secondary outcome. Results: Ten studies were identified involving 78489 patients, with 3518 patients in the SSI group, and 74971 patients in the Non-SSI group. The meta-analysis process revealed a pooled prevalence of SSI in diabetic patients of 26.3%. Also, there was a highly significant increase in DM in the SSI group compared to the Non-SSI group (p = 0.01). Conclusion: To conclude, our results support the hypothesis of DM is an independent risk factor for SSIs for different surgical procedures. Awareness about DM control helps to improve surgical outcomes for diabetic patients.