Common surgical site infections increase in frequency during the summer months, according to recent research published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
Researchers analyzed six years of data from the 15 most commonly performed procedures in 20 hospitals in the Duke Infection Control Outreach Network between Jan. 1, 2007 and Dec. 31, 2012. They performed regression and sensitivity analyses on the data and stratified the results to obtain estimates based on procedure type and organism type. All total, they identified 4,543 SSI following 441,428 surgical procedures.
The study revealed the rate of SSIs was significantly higher during the summer compared with the remainder of the year (1.11 per 100 procedures versus 1 per 100 procedures, respectively). Additionally, calculations revealed higher SSI rates during the summer for spinal procedures, non-spinal procedures and infections due to either gram-positive cocci or gram-negative bacilli.
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