ObjectivesTo systematically review the efficacy of prophylactic antimicrobial use on preventing infections after arthroscopy.MethodsPubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, CBM and WanFang Data databases were electronically searched to collect clinical studies on the efficacy of prophylactic antimicrobial use on preventing infections after arthroscopy from January 1990 to September 2020. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed risk of bias of included studies; then, meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.3 software and Stata 15.0 software.ResultsA total of 8 retrospective cohort studies and 1 randomized controlled trial involving 60 136 subjects were included. The results of the meta-analysis showed that: there was no difference in the post-operational infection rate among patients with and without antimicrobial prophylaxis for arthroscopies (OR=0.51, 95%CI 0.25 to 1.04, P=0.06). For knee arthroscopies, the post-operational infection rate had no difference between patients with and without antimicrobial prophylaxis (OR=0.89, 95% CI 0.65 to 1.23, P=0.48). However, for shoulder arthroscopies, the post-operational infection rate in the antimicrobial prophylaxis group was significantly lower than that in the group without the antimicrobial prophylaxis(OR=0.18, 95%CI 0.08 to 0.37, P<0.000 01).ConclusionsCurrent evidence shows that there is no association between preoperative antimicrobial prophylaxis and a decreased infection rate for knee arthroscopies. Antimicrobial prophylaxis appears to lead to fewer infections after shoulder arthroscopies. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high-quality studies are required to verify above conclusions.