| Summary: | Abstract Background Despite being a preventable complication of surgical procedures, surgical site infections (SSIs) continue to threaten public health with significant impacts on the patients and the health-care human and financial resources. With millions affected globally, there is significant variation in the primary studies on the prevalence of SSIs in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study aimed to estimate the pooled prevalence of SSI and its associated factors among postoperative patients in Ethiopia. Methods PubMed, Scopus, Psyinfo, African Journals Online, and Google Scholar were searched for studies that looked at SSI in postoperative patients. A funnel plot and Egger’s regression test were used to determine publication bias. The I2 statistic was used to check heterogeneity between the studies. DerSimonian and Laird random-effects model was applied to estimate the pooled effect size, odds ratios (ORs), and 95% confidence interval (CIs) across studies. The subgroup analysis was conducted by region, sample size, and year of publication. Sensitivity analysis was deployed to determine the effect of a single study on the overall estimation. Analysis was done using STATA™ Version 14 software. Result A total of 24 studies with 13,136 study participants were included in this study. The estimated pooled prevalence of SSI in Ethiopia was 12.3% (95% CI: 10.19, 14.42). Duration of surgery > 1 h (AOR = 1.78; 95% CI: 1.08–2.94), diabetes mellitus (AOR = 3.25; 95% CI: 1.51–6.99), American Society of Anaesthesiologists score > 1 (AOR = 2.51; 95% CI: 1.07–5.91), previous surgery (AOR = 2.5; 95% CI: 1.77–3.53), clean-contaminated wound (AOR = 2.15; 95% CI: 1.52–3.04), and preoperative hospital stay > 7 day (AOR = 5.76; 95% CI: 1.15–28.86), were significantly associated with SSI. Conclusion The prevalence of SSI among postoperative patients in Ethiopia remains high with a pooled prevalence of 12.3% in 24 extracted studies. Therefore, situation based interventions and region context-specific preventive strategies should be developed to reduce the prevalence of SSI among postoperative patients.
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