Gu W, et al. - This prospective, multicenter study was designed to assess the incidence and risk factors for infection in spine surgery. Researchers recognized that identification of these risk factors could aid in stratifying preoperative risk to reduce surgical site infection (SSI) incidence. The results could also be helpful in counseling patients and their families during the consent process.

Methods

• Researchers identified a total of 1,764 patients who had spinal trauma or degenerative spinal diseases and were treated with instrumented surgeries from January 2015 through February 2016.
• These patients were followed up for 1 year and had complete data.
• They abstracted data on all patients from electronic medical records.
• SSIs were prospectively inspected and diagnosed by surgeons in the department.
• The leader of this study settled the disagreement among them.
• To perform the analyses, they used SPSS 19.0.

Results

• Researchers recognized SSI in 58 patients (3.3%, 58 of 1764); 1.1% had deep SSI, and 2.2% had superficial SSI. A polymicrobial cause was identified in 60.6% (21 of 33) among them.
• Majority of them (51 of 58) appeared during hospitalization.
• SSI occurred at a median period of 3 days after operation (range: 1–123 days).
• Significant prolongation of hospital stays (by 9.3 days on average) were observed with SSI.
• In univariate analysis, reason for surgery was identified as the only significant risk factor.
• However, in multivariate analysis, they identified 8 significant risk factors, including higher BMI, surgical site (cervical), surgical approach (posterior), surgery performed in summer, reasons for surgery (degenerative disease), autograft for fusion and fixation, and higher preoperative platelet level.