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D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 4 | O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
In a study published in the journal BMJ (
tinyurl.com/o5v4tys)
, we showed
that a bundled approach used to prevent surgical site infections before
cardiac and orthopedic procedures — which included nasal decoloniza-
tion and antibiotic prophylaxis with glycopeptide antibiotics such as van-
comycin for patients with MRSA — significantly reduced overall risk of
SSIs by 1% and resulted in a 0.5% risk-reduction of gram-positive SSIs.
Doesn't sound like much of a difference, does it? But it is clinically signifi-
cant when you consider that roughly 300,000 cardiac procedures and
approximately 900,000 orthopedic procedures are performed each year.
Reducing infection risk by such a seemingly small amount would actually
prevent upwards of 12,000 SSIs each year.
The BMJ study shows the benefits of a bundled approach, but is it
applicable outside the pages of medical journals? We recently imple-
mented the program before hip and knee procedures and cardiac sur-
geries at 20 hospitals nationwide and saw similar dramatic decreases
in infection rates, proving that it works in the real world, too. OSM
Dr. Schweizer (
ma rin-schweizer@uiowa.edu
) is an assistant professor of
internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of
Medicine and the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.
I N F E C T I O N C O N T R O L
