Effect of statins on preventing infectious complications after surgery: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective A meta-analysis to investigate the association between preoperative statin use and the risk of postoperative infectious complications in patients undergoing surgery. Methods PubMed (R) and Embase (R) databases were searched for relevant studies. Data were extracted using a standardized data collection form. The primary effect measure was the odds ratio (OR) of postoperative infectious complications. Summary OR were calculated. Results The analysis included 10 cohort studies with a total of 147263 participants. Statin use was associated with a lower incidence of postoperative infectious complications in all studies (summary OR 0.917, 95% confidence intervals [CI] 0.862, 0.975, fixed-effects model; summary OR 0.731, 95% CI 0.584, 0.870, random-effects model); cardiac surgery (summary OR 0.673; 95% CI 0.535, 0.847); treatment in the USA (summary OR 0.678; 95% CI 0.597, 0.770); retrospective cohort studies (summary OR 0.664; 95% CI 0.521, 0.846). Conclusion Preoperative statin use is associated with a reduced risk of postoperative infectious complications.