Challenges in reporting surgical site infections to the national surgical site infection surveillance and suggestions for improvement

Surgical site infection surveillance after open gastrectomy and risk factors for surgical site infection.

Surgical site infection (SSI) surveillance was examined in gastric cancer patients who had undergone an open gastrectomy between 1997 and 2003 at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo, Japan. National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance (NNIS) reports and several studies have discussed SSI risk factors, but only open gastrectomy was analyzed by regression analysis. The purpose of this study was to e...

Surgical site infection surveillance following ambulatory surgery.

We assessed 4045 ambulatory surgery patients for surgical site infection (SSI) using claims-based triggers for medical chart review. Of 98 patients flagged by codes suggestive of SSI, 35 had confirmed SSIs. SSI rates ranged from 0 to 3.2% for common procedures. Claims may be useful for SSI surveillance following ambulatory surgery.

Caesarean section surgical site infection surveillance.

Surveillance of surgical site infection (SSI) is an important infection control activity. The Caesarean section procedure was selected, as part of the Scottish Surveillance of Healthcare Associated Infection Programme, to monitor and report upon the incidence of SSI. Data were collected prospectively for 715 patients undergoing a Caesarean section procedure for 35 weeks during the latter months...

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...

editorial commentary: prophylaxis for surgical site infections