Automated Methods for Surveillance of Surgical Site Infections

Automated methods for surveillance of surgical site infections.

Automated data, especially from pharmacy and administrative claims, are available for much of the U.S. population and might substantially improve both inpatient and postdischarge surveillance for surgical site infections complicating selected procedures, while reducing the resources required. Potential improvements include better sensitivity, less susceptibility to interobserver variation, more...

Improved surveillance for surgical site infections after orthopedic implantation procedures: extending applications for automated data.

BACKGROUND Screening methods that use automated data may streamline surgical site infection (SSI) surveillance and improve the accuracy and comparability of data on SSIs. We evaluated the use of automated inpatient diagnosis codes and pharmacy data to identify SSIs after arthroplasty. METHODS This retrospective cohort study at 8 hospitals involved weighted, random samples of medical records f...

Surveillance for surgical site infections: the uses of antibiotic exposure.

Conventional methods of surveillance for surgical site infections are resource intensive, thus creating an incentive to develop simpler alternatives. Antibiotic exposure may serve as a satisfactory marker for a physician's belief that infection is present and, therefore, may be a more efficient, and perhaps more accurate, measure than identification of an explicit diagnosis in the medical recor...

Surveillance of surgical-site infections: the world coming together?

Surgical-site infections (SSIs) are associated with substantial risk of morbidity, resulting in prolongation of hospital stay and monetary costs attributable to the infection. Reporting surgeon-specific SSI rates back to the surgeon has been shown in a number of studies to reduce SSI rates significantly, with appropriate cautions." Because of this, several countries have recently examined and r...

editorial commentary: prophylaxis for surgical site infections