Efficacy of clean v sterile surgical prep kits

The goal of preoperative skin preparation is to reduce the risk of postoperative wound infections. This study was designed to determine if a difference exists in the residual microbial flora on the skin of surgical patients who are prepped with clean versus sterile prep kits. The researchers randomly assigned 60 ambulatory surgery patients to two preoperative skin preparation groups (i.e., clean prep kits, sterile prep kits) and obtained cultures of the patients' surgical sites at three different times (i.e., before performing standard povidone-iodine scrub-and-paint skin preps, 10 minutes after the completion of the skin preps, immediately after skin closure). They used repeated mixed factorial analyses of variance to compute the differences in residual microbial counts at the patients' surgical sites. There was no difference in the residual microbial skin flora in the patients prepped with clean or sterile skin prep kits. The study results have significant cost-saving implications for health care facilities and surgical patients.