Surgical site infection (SSI) is a common hospital acquired infection that can increase medical burden and affect patient prognosis. Its occurrence involves multiple factors such as the patient’s basic condition and perioperative management quality. Although there is a basic consensus on SSI prevention in domestic and foreign guidelines, there are still differences between the recommendations in the guidelines and infection prevention and control management. To further promote the implementation of the guidelines, this article reviews the key preventive measures for SSI in domestic and foreign guidelines from preoperative skin preparation, intraoperative standardized operation, and postoperative incision management, and explores in depth the management strategies of SSI, in order to provide a reference for building a full process infection prevention and control system for SSI.