Surgical Safety Quality Measures
Surgical site infections affect approximately
500,000 persons per year according to a Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report. Numerous factors such as age and general health status of persons
undergoing surgery can affect rates of infection at any given hospital.
For
decades antibiotics have been given prior to surgery to reduce the risk of
surgical site infection. Research exploring the practice of giving pre-operative
antibiotics appeared in The American
Journal of Surgery (June, 1996; 171: 548-552)
and demonstrated the importance of antibiotic timing for prevention (prophylaxis)
of surgical infections.
According to JCAHO's
Surgical Infection Prevention Core Performance Measures, patients undergoing
surgical procedures such as heart, hip, colon, and vascular surgeries should
receive an antibiotic within one hour prior to the incision being made to prevent
surgical site infection.
While
the ideal timing of antibiotic administration for every surgical procedure
has not been studied, the one-hour timing for antibiotics is recommended by
the National
Surgical Infection Prevention Project team as the standard for
surgical procedures that require preventive antibiotic therapy.
Because there
are numerous drug-resistant bacteria today, it is important to use antibiotics
sparingly. The goal for antibiotic use with surgical procedures is to prevent
surgical site infections and thereby reduce overall antibiotic use.
89 percent
of
St. Mary's Hospital Medical Center's surgical patients received antibiotics within one hour prior
to the surgical incision being made in
2006.