SURGICAL SITE INFECTIONS: INCIDENCE AND ADDITIONAL COSTS
Abstract:
Despite the progress made in the modern surgery, the surgical site infections continue to occupy a main place among the complications that occur after the surgery of any kind, resulting in substantial increases of the morbidity and perhaps of the mortality in the operated patients and also of the total cost of the hospitalization. Objectives: The evaluation of the incidence of the surgical site infections and the cost of these complications in terms of mortality, days of hospitalization and financial losses. Material and method: Case-control study; the cases are 45 patients with surgical site infections, who were paired according to the ratio 1:2 with 90 control patients who did not have postoperative infectious complications. The patients are from surgical wards of an emergency county hospital with 1054 beds. Results: The incidence of these postoperative infectious complications was of 1.24%; they have a major impact on the hospital costs: the prolongation of the postoperative hospitalization of the patients with a median of the value of 16 days, the rising cost of the hospitalization of the patients with over 100%. There was not a significantly higher risk of death among the patients with postoperative infection compared with those without infection. Conclusions: The surveillance and control programmes of the postoperative infectious complications can lead to the significant reduction of the postoperative morbidity and of the direct and indirect costs of the surgery.
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