SURGICAL SITE INFECTIONS (SSI)

What are surgical site infections?

“Despite considerable research on best practice in refining surgical techniques, technological advances and environmental improvements in the operating room, and the use of prophylactic antibiotics, infection at the surgical site remains the second most common adverse event occurring to hospitalized patients” http://en.haiwatch.com

“Currently there are more than 40 million inpatient and 31 million outpatient surgeries performed each year in the United States, with at least 2% of these patients, or approximately 1.4 million, developing a surgical site infection.” http://en.haiwatch.com

 What is a Surgical Site Infection (SSI)?

A surgical site infection is an infection that occurs after surgery in the part of the body where the surgery took place.

Some of the common symptoms of a surgical site infection are:

• Redness and pain around the area where you had surgery
• Drainage of cloudy fluid from your surgical wound
• Fever

Criteria for defining a surgical site infection:

• An infection must occur within 30 days of the surgery in order to be classified as a surgical site infection
• If the surgery includes implantation of device, for instance a pacemaker, or prosthesis then the window of opportunity for infection extends to one year
• Evidence of pus, cellulitis, incision and drainage of surgical site 
•  Diagnosis of SSI by MD

Patient risk factors for surgical site infection

• Age
• Gender
• Nutritional status/malnutrition
• Smoking
• Proper use of antibiotics intraoperative
• Pre-existing diabetes and/or preoperative hyperglycemia
• Obesity
• Pre-existing infection
• Dirty wound
• Hypothermia

 Treatment of SSI

 Most surgical site infections can be treated with antibiotics. The antibiotic given depends on the bacteria (germs) causing the infection. Sometimes patients with SSIs may also need another surgery to treat the infection.

References:

http://www.cdc.gov.
http://en.haiwatch.com/