Effect of drain placement in short‐level spinal surgery on postoperative wound infection: A meta‐analysis

Abstract

AbstractIn the meta‐analysis, we evaluated the efficacy of placing drainage channels following single‐ or double‐level spine surgery in order to decrease the incidence of postoperative injury. We conducted the analysis with the help of four databases: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of Science. A review of related studies was carried out after evaluating the quality of the literature against the classification and exclusion criteria set for the trial. Calculation of 95% CI, OR and MD was performed with fixed‐effect models. A meta‐analysis of the data was carried out with RevMan 5.3. Meta‐analyses of randomized controlled trial (RCT) did not indicate that there were a statistically significantly different incidence of postoperative wound infections among those who received drainage compared to those who did not receive drainage (OR, 2.29; 95% CI, 0.50, 10.41 p = 0.28). Moreover, there were no statistically significant differences in post‐operation hematoma (OR, 1.20; 95% CI, 0.27, 5.28 p = 0.81) and visual analogue scale score (MD, −0.01; 95% CI, −1.34, 1.33 p = 0.99). Thus, placing drainage in short‐levels of spine operation did not significantly influence the outcome of postoperative wound complications. Nevertheless, because of the limited sample size chosen for this meta‐analysis, caution should be exercised when treating these data. More high‐quality RCT trials with a large number of samples are required to confirm the findings.