A meta-analysis of the effects of preoperative mechanical intestinal preparation and oral antibiotics on surgical site infection after rectal tumor resection.

To systematically evaluate the effect of preoperative mechanical bowel preparation combined with oral antibiotics on surgical site infection after elective rectal resection. PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane library, CNKI database, Wanfang database, Chinese Science and Technology Journal full text database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, In addition, the relevant studies on the effects of mechanical bowel preparation before rectal resection combined with oral antibiotics and surgical site infection were systematically searched in Chinese ClinicalTrial Registry and ClinicalTrials.gov until 2 October 2025. References were screened according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, literature quality assessment and data extraction were performed, and data analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. 8 studies including 7516 patients with rectal tumours were included. The results of the meta-analysis showed that preoperative mechanical bowel preparation combined with oral antibiotics was associated with a lower risk of surgical site infection (RR = 0.46, 95%CI = 0.32-0.67, p < 0.0001) and was more significantly associated with a lower incidence of anastomotic fistula (RR = 0.34, P < 0.00001). 95% CI = 0.21-0.54, p < 0.00001).and preoperative mechanical devices combined with oral antibiotics were associated with a reduced risk of surgical site infection in the remaining subgroups. According to the results of this meta-analysis, the combination of preoperative mechanical bowel preparation and oral antibiotics is significantly associated with a reduction in the risk of surgical site infection in elective rectal resection and may reduce the risk of surgical site infection in organs and body cavities such as the incidence of anastomotic leakage (AL).