Objective: This study was to compare the effect of prophylactic intravenous antibiotics and antimicrobial coated suture in the prevention of surgical site infection in paediatric groin surgeries. Method: This was a prospective comparative study of paediatric patients that were operated on for inguinal hernias and hydroceles at the Paediatric Surgical Unit of University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu. Ethical approval was obtained for the study from UNTH Research and Ethics Committee. The study was carried out over a period of 16 months (1st May 2016 to 31st August 2017). The Group A patients had their wounds closed with triclosan coated polyglactin-910 (vicryl-plus) suture while patients in Group B received preoperative intravenous ampicillin/cloxacillin antibiotic combination 30 minutes before the inguinal incision was made. All the patients were followed up for 30 days and the outcomes were recorded in a proforma and data analyzed using IBM SPSS statistical software version-21.0 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY. USA). Descriptive statistical analysis including frequency calculation was done for categorical data and mean and standard deviations for continuous data. A chi-square test was used to test the homogeneity of proportions as well as independence between categorical variables of interest, and t-test was used to compare means. In all, p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: There were 86 patients that participated in this study involving 63(73.3%) males and 23(26.7%) females. The vicryl-plus group had 43 patients and antibiotic arm also had 43 patients. The mean age of the participants was 4.2±3.7years with the mean age of 4.1±3.8years for vicryl-plus arm and 4.4±3.6years for antibiotic arm (MWU, p=0.710). Among the 86 patients, 41(47.7%) children, had unilateral inguinal hernia while 10(11.8%) patients had bilateral inguinal hernia and all 35(40.7%) cases of hydroceles recruited into the study were unilateral. There were 96 groin surgeries performed on the 86 recruited patients as a result of 10 patients that had bilateral inguinal hernias. Out of these 96 groin surgeries performed, 48 surgeries were done in the vicryl-plus group and also 48 surgeries performed in the antibiotic arm. The highest proportion of surgeries performed in the vicryl-plus group 24\48 (50.0%) and antibiotic group 16\48 (33.3%) were for right sided inguinal hernias. The least proportion of groin surgeries done in vicryl-plus group 5\48 (10.4%) were for left sided hydroceles while the least proportion of surgeries in the antibiotic group 8\48 (16.7%) were for left sided inguinal hernias. The difference in proportion however was not found to be statistically significant. (x2 =7.619, p=0.055). There was 1.0% (1/96) case of SSI recorded in this study which occurred in the antibiotic arm (x2 =1.011. p=0.315). A second other complication observed in the surgical wounds was seroma which occurred in 3.1% (3/96) of the wounds of which 1.0% (1\96) occurred in the vicryl-plus arm and 2.1% (2\96) in the antibiotic group (x2 0.344, p=0.557). The SSI that developed was superficial and resolved within 7 days with alternate day wound care.