Does Perioperative Oxygen Reduce Surgical Wound Infections Medscape

Description: Comment on methodological weaknees of the article from Arch Surg. 2009;144:359-366 which has the following summary.
The authors carried out a meta-analysis based on 5 randomized controlled trials discovered after searching> 2000 reports. Of these 5 studies, 3 included only patients undergoing colorectal surgery. Oxygen concentration was 80% in the therapeutic group compared with 30% to 35% in the control group. Duration of postoperative oxygen supplementation was 2 to 6 hours. Use of supplemental oxygen therapy lowered the wound infection rate from 12% to 9% (P = .006).
Albert B. Lowenfels, MD Medscape General Surgery © 2009