Peritonitis is a fairly common and challenging disease we come across in the surgical practice. Operative treatment and intra operative peritoneal lavage are the main stay of the treatment. The objectives of this study is to compare the outcome in terms of surgical wound infection, intra abdominal abscess, sepsis and hospital stay in saline peritoneal lavage group and metronidazole peritoneal lavage group in operated cases of peritonitis. A Comparative Study was done at ASRAM General Hospital, Eluru, Andhra Pradesh, during the period from November 2011 to October 2013. A total of 100 patients were studied, who were randomly divided in to two groups receiving Saline IOPL and Metronidazole IOPL. Outcomes were compared between the two groups. There was a reduction in incidence of wound infection in metronidazole IOPL group by 14%, sepsis was reduced by 10%, intra abdominal abscess by 2%. Mortality was increased by 2% in the metronidazole lavage group. Mean hospital stay was lesser in the metronidazole lavage group by 1.8 days. However, none of these findings were found to be statistically significant. Further studies are needed with larger sample size to assess the statistical significance of these findings.