No difference was found in the rate of postoperative surgical site infection (SSI) between outpatient surgical procedures performed with sterile vs nonsterile gloves, a recent study found. In order to explore rates of SSI with the use of sterile vs nonsterile gloves in outpatient cutaneous surgical procedures, researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies from several databases. With the exclusion of 1 single-arm observational study of 1,204 patients, 11,071 patients from 13 studies remained in the meta-analysis. They found:

• Of these, 228 were documented as having postoperative SSI (2.1%), including 107 of 5,031 patients in the nonsterile glove group (2.1%) and 121 of 6,040 patients in the sterile glove group (2.0%).

• Overall relative risk for SSI with nonsterile glove use was 1.06.