Pooled estimates across reviews for surgical site infection and post surgical complication for RCTs only.

CABG: Coronary Artery Bypass Graft; LCI: Lower Confidence Interval; UCI: Upper Confidence Interval; *Original review included both RCTs and observational studies but results reported here pertain only to RCTs. AMSTAR score is an assessment of review quality (0–11 best), see text for details; Egger is test for publication bias (see text); % weight is weight from a random effects panoramic meta-analysis; $1: results in paper were staples v sutures, results here are sutures v staples; S2: no pooling in paper we computed this estimate.