1. What data in particular will be shared?
   Response - Individual participant data that underlie the results reported in this article, after de-identification (text, tables, figures, and appendices).
   


2. What additional supporting information will be shared?
   Response - Clinical Study Report
   
   
3. Who will be able to view these files?
   Response - Anyone
   


4. For what types of analyses will this data be available?
   Response - Any purpose.
   


5. By what mechanism will data be made available?
   Response (Others) -  NIL


6. For how long will this data be available start date provided 09-09-2025 and end date provided 01-09-2030?
   Response - Beginning 3 months and ending 5 years following article publication.
   


7. Any URL or additional information regarding plan/policy for sharing IPD? 
   Additional Information - NIL

Surgical site infections are common hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and are associated with high morbidity and mortality. Among the HAIs, Surgical Site Infection (SSI) is serious complication causing increasing morbidity and currently one of the most important among the HAIs comprising 20% of it.^1,10 SSIs are responsible for an additional 7-11 days of hospital stay.¹⁹ The incidence of SSI vary widely from 3 to 34% and is responsible for considerable increase in the cost of treatment.^4,6 Even when using best practices, many factors associated with SSIs are not easily modifiable, including use of neoadjuvant therapy and the length of operation. However, one actionable area is the management of surgical incision. This can be achieved by application of wound protectors, disinfectants to the skin, or specialized dressings.^11,20 A majority of studies evaluating the impact of using such interventions is composed of retrospective studies, which often suffer from selection bias.

Negative-pressure wound therapy (NPWT) devices were designed to remove fluids from the incisional wound in the early postoperative phase, to reduce tensile forces across the incision and to protect the incision from external contamination. Negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) on closed, clean incisions, has emerged as a prophylactic option to reduce the risk of SSI in high- risk incisions.^15,16

Standard et al., have done a study of pNPWT in extremity fractures (open reduction and internal fixation). There was a total of 23 infections in control group and 14 in NPWT group, which represented a significant difference in favor of NPWT (p = 0.049). The relative risk of developing an infection was 1.9 times higher in control patients than in patients treated with NPWT (95% confidence interval, 1.03–3.55).¹³

In a study done by Shen et al., he found no significant differences in superficial SSIs (12.8% vs. 12.9%; p > 0.99) or deep SSI (3.0% vs. 3.0%; p > 0.99) rates between the SSD and NPWT groups, respectively. In the univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis of demographic and operative factors for the development of combined incisional SSI, the only independent predictors were preoperative albumin (p = 0.0031) and type of operation (p = 0.018).²¹