SSI trends in community hospitals

Editor's Note

In this study, researchers from the Duke Infection Control Outreach Network Surveillance Team, Duke University School of Medicine,  Durham, North Carolina, find that surgical site infection (SSI) rates did not decrease in community hospitals from 2013 to 2018.

SSI data was collected from patients having 26 common surgical procedures at 32 community hospitals in the southeastern US.

Over the 6-year study period:

• 3,561 complex (deep incisional or organ-space) SSIs occurred after 669,467 surgical procedures (prevalence rate of 0.53 SSIs per 100 procedures).
• The complex SSI prevalence rate did not change significantly (0.58 of 100 procedures in 2013 vs 0.53 in 2018).
• Methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus complex SSIs (480, 13.5%) were more common than methicillin-resistant S aureus complex SSIs (363, 10.2%).

The complex SSI rate did not decrease, which is a change from prior comparisons, and the reason for this is unclear, the researchers note. Additional research is needed to determine the proportion of SSIs that are preventable and what measures would be effective in reducing SSI rates, they say.