Many strategies have been attempted to reduce SSI rates. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services introduced the Surgical Care Improvement Project infection project with the aim of reducing SSI incidence and morbidity. These measures include prophylactic intravenous antibiotics administered within 1 hour of skin incision, appropriate prophylactic antibiotic selection, discontinuation of prophylactic antibiotics within 24 hours after surgery, appropriate hair removal, and maintenance of perioperative normothermia. Despite the enforcement of these measures through quality reporting and pay-for-performance measures, significant controversy exists as to their overall effectiveness, especially in the high-risk colorectal surgical population. Laparoscopic surgery has been shown to improve SSI rates in the colorectal population; however, not all patients are appropriate candidates for this approach and the inability of promising interventions such as wound edge protection6 and gentamicin sponges4 to improve SSI rates following colorectal surgery mandate the investigation of novel techniques.