Background: Surgical site infections (SSI) are one of the major complications that develop in surgical patients and are the mostcommon nosocomial infection in patients undergoing surgery, carrying significant morbidity and mortality rates. Severalmeasures are taken to reduce surgical site infection. Removal of hair is also important for a surgery that helps the surgeon inoperation and also after postoperative period during bandaging. Several methods of hair removal are present as razor shaving,depilatory method, clipping etc. Razor shaving is the most popular method of hair removal from operative site of preoperativepatients in developing country like Bangladesh that can cause preoperative skin abrasion that may be source of skin infectionand can induce surgical site infection.

Objective: To determine whether preoperative razor shaving or depilatory method of hair removal is preferred to reducepostoperative wound infection. In addition the study also considered variables under comparisons were age, sex, BMI & Hb%,condition of wound, type of operation, length of incision, duration of operation, pre-operative hospital stay as well as status ofwound healing.

Method: This crosssectional comparative study was conducted on 100 patients of which in case of 50 patients' preoperative hairremoval were done from operation site by razor shaving and in 50 patients' preoperative hair removal were done from operationsite by depilatory method. Outcome variable was wound infection.

Results: Wound infection was compared of both groups of patients. Total 19% wound infections were detected. Among thegroup-I (who had razor shaving), 41 (82%) patients had satisfactory healing and among the Group-II (who had hair removal bydepilatory method), 40 (80%) patients had satisfactory healing. There is no statistically significant difference of woundinfection between the two groups of patients.

Conclusion: There is the same outcome of surgical site infection in case of preoperative hair removal by razor shaving andpreoperative hair removal by depilatory method.