Evidence appraisal of Takalkar YP, Namdeo Garale M, Somasundaram S, Venkataramani K, Gothwal KN, Pandrowala SA. Comparison of efficacy of chlorhexidine alcohol scrub and povidone iodine scrub in hand cleansing in elective clean surgery. Int Surg J. 2016;3(4):1937‐1941.

Surgical site infections (SSIs), which occur in up to 30% of all surgical procedures, are associated with significant morbidity and mortality, including increased length of hospitalization and increases of 2-fold to 5-fold in hospital costs. 1-4 It is an established fact that the normal skin of healthy human beings harbours a rich bacterial flora. Normally considered non-pathogenic, these organisms may be a potential source of infection of the surgical wound, making skin preparation at the time of the procedure critical. Hand antisepsis remains the overall best preventive solution to eliminate transient microorganisms and reduce resident skin flora and therefore surgical site infection. The surgeon uses different methods of surgical hand antisepsis with the aim of reducing surgical site infections caused by recent days multidrug resistant microorganisms. With most other antiseptics having failed to prove in eradicating these microorganisms, povidone iodine is promising for good surgical antisepsis (hand preparation). The availability of newer alcohol based chlorhexidine scrubs led to testing the efficacy of these in comparison to the traditional povidone iodine scrubs. 5 ABSTRACT