Abstract
Aim:To describe the relationship between cesarean skin incision type and postoperative wound complications (WCs) in obese pregnant patients.Materials & methods:MEDLINE (PubMed and OVID), Embase, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, Cochrane Library and ClinicalTrials.gov databases were used for publication search. Selection criteria consisted of articles studying pregnant patients with BMI ≥30 kg/m2 undergoing cesarean delivery and assessing the effect of skin incision type on postoperative maternal outcomes.Results:Ten publications met criteria for a systematic review of a total of 2946 patients. The transverse skin incision was associated with a lower rate of WC compared with the vertical skin incision. The pooled risk ratio for WCs was 0.47 (95% CI: 0.37–0.58; p < 0.00001).Conclusion:Transverse skin incision may be preferable to vertical skin incision at cesarean delivery in pregnant patients with obesity as it may be associated with a lower rate of WCs.PROSPERO registration ID: CRD42020151106
Highlights
Insufficient definitive guidance is available to assist obstetricians in the selection of the best incision type to use for obese pregnant patients undergoing cesarean delivery (CD)
Our systematic review of the literature is consistent with other publications in that transverse skin incision may be preferable to vertical skin incision at CD in pregnant patients with obesity as it may be associated with a lower rate of wound complications
More RCTs investigating different types of transverse skin incisions will appear, allowing us to perform systematic reviews and meta-analysis to describe the association between supra and infrapinnacular incision type and WCs in obese patients with cesarean delivery (CD)
Summary
To describe the relationship between cesarean skin incision type and postoperative wound complications (WCs) in obese pregnant patients. The aim of this study was to describe the relationship between cesarean skin incision type and postoperative WCs as well as other outcomes in obese women using the systematic review method
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