Post-operative infections are among the most serious and most damaging complications from any surgery. In the case of heart surgery, they are potentially fatal. Two studies being presented this week at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2011 reveal some surprising data on post-op heart surgery infections.
The first study looked at over 5,100 patients who underwent cardiac surgery at ten large medical centers. About fifteen percent of these patients suffered an infection after their surgery. The expectation was that surgical site infections would be the most common. Instead, pneumonia was.
Half of all patients that had a post-op infection had no sign of one when discharged from the hospital. The study's lead reasearcher, Michael A. Acker, M.D., points out that this finding suggests that post-op patients need far more intensive follow up than previously thought.
C. difficile colitis, bloodstream infections and surgical site infections made up the majority of the remaining serious post-operative complications. Of the 751 infections discovered, 300 were classified as major infections. Minor infections included urinary tract infections and superficial surgical site infections.
The second study being presented looked at one potential method for reducing post-op infections from surgery to place cardiac implantable electronic devices. Researchers at a Milwaukee hospital treated 3,700 patients with special skin preparations before surgery.
The surgical site was prepped the night before surgery and then the morning of surgery with an antibacterial solution. The occurance of infection from surgery was reduced over the following year from one percent to just under one quarter of one percent. Renee Koeberl, R.N., M.S.N., lead author of the study, point out that staph infections are on the increase. This is one possible means of preventing such infections.
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