Abstract Background Surgical site infection (SSI) is the third most frequent type of nosocomial infections. Triclosan-coated sutures are often used to reduce the risk of SSI, but studies examining this have given conflicting results. Therefore, this meta-analysis was performed to assess the efficacy of triclosan-coated sutures for reducing risk of SSI in adults. Methods PubMed, EMBASE, Google Scholar, and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched to identify randomized clinical trials evaluating triclosan-coated sutures for preventing SSI on patients 18 y or older. Results Thirteen randomized clinical trials involving 5256 participants were included. Triclosan-coated sutures were associated with lower risk of SSI than uncoated sutures across all surgeries (risk ratio RR 0.76, 95% confidence interval CI 0.65–0.88, P  < 0.001). Similar proportions of patients experienced wound dehiscence with either type of suture (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.49–1.89, P  = 0.92). Subgroup analysis showed lower risk of SSI with triclosan-coated sutures in abdominal surgeries (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.50–0.99, P  = 0.04) and group with prophylactic antibiotic (RR 0.79, 95% CI 0.63–0.99, P  = 0.04). However, such risk reduction was not observed in cardiac surgeries, breast surgeries, or group without prophylactic antibiotic. Conclusions Triclosan-coated sutures can decrease the incidence of SSI in abdominal surgeries and might not interfere with wound healing process. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to examine whether triclosan-coated sutures are effective at preventing SSI in non-abdominal surgeries and to further study the interaction of antibiotic prophylaxis with triclosan-coated sutures.