Karin Svensson Malchau

1. Introduction Ankle fractures are the third most common type of fracture in Sweden, with an incidence of 127 per 100,000 person-years [1]. The Sahlgrenska University Hospital (SU) alone treats approximately 700 ankle fractures annually [2]. One of the most common complications after ankle fracture surgery is surgical site infection (SSI) [3], with an incidence of between 1 and 28% [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18].

Methods and analysis Inclusion and randomisation All patients meeting the inclusion criteria (table 1) will be consecutively enrolled at the Unit for Orthopaedic Infections (UOI), which is part of a large tertiary orthopaedic centre at Sahlgrenska University Hospital (Mölndal, Sweden). The UOI is dedicated to optimising the management of orthopaedic infections. In case of inadequate enrolment, a secondary medium-sized orthopaedic unit (previous collaborations) will be engaged.