Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control (Sep 2023)

Staphylococcus aureus surgical site infection rates in 5 European countries

  • Sibylle C. Mellinghoff,
  • Caroline Bruns,
  • Markus Albertsmeier,
  • Juliane Ankert,
  • Louis Bernard,
  • Sofia Budin,
  • Camille Bataille,
  • Annika Y. Classen,
  • Florian B. Cornely,
  • Elodie Couvé-Deacon,
  • Maria Fernandez Ferrer,
  • Jesús Fortún,
  • Alicia Galar,
  • Eva Grill,
  • Thomas Guimard,
  • Jürgen A. Hampl,
  • Sebastian Wingen-Heimann,
  • Juan P. Horcajada,
  • Felix Köhler,
  • Carolin Koll,
  • Joan Mollar,
  • Patricia Muñoz,
  • Mathias W. Pletz,
  • Jule Rutz,
  • Jon Salmanton-García,
  • Harald Seifert,
  • Ferdinand Serracino-Inglott,
  • Alex Soriano,
  • Jannik Stemler,
  • Janne J. Vehreschild,
  • Tim O. Vilz,
  • Jan-Hendrik Naendrup,
  • Oliver A. Cornely,
  • Blasius J. Liss

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13756-023-01309-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Abstract Objective To determine the overall and procedure-specific incidence of surgical site infections (SSI) caused by Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) as well as risk factors for such across all surgical disciplines in Europe. Methods This is a retrospective cohort of patients with surgical procedures performed at 14 European centres in 2016, with a nested case–control analysis. S. aureus SSI were identified by a semi-automated crossmatching bacteriological and electronic health record data. Within each surgical procedure, cases and controls were matched using optimal propensity score matching. Results A total of 764 of 178 902 patients had S. aureus SSI (0.4%), with 86.0% of these caused by methicillin susceptible and 14% by resistant pathogens. Mean S. aureus SSI incidence was similar for all surgical specialties, while varying by procedure. Conclusions This large procedure-independent study of S. aureus SSI proves a low overall infection rate of 0.4% in this cohort. It provides proof of principle for a semi-automated approach to utilize big data in epidemiological studies of healthcare-associated infections. Trials registration The study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov under NCT03353532 (11/2017).

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