Staphylococcus aureus surgical site infection rates in 5 European countries

Mellinghoff, Sibylle C.; Fernández Ferrer, Maria; Horcajada Gallego, Juan Pablo; Liss, Blasius J.

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13756-023-01309-w

Staphylococcus aureus surgical site infection rates in 5 European countries

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Mellinghoff SC, Bruns C, Albertsmeier M, Ankert J, Bernard L, Budin S et al. Staphylococcus aureus surgical site infection rates in 5 European countries. Antimicrob Resist Infect Control. 2023 Sep 19;12(1):104. DOI: 10.1186/s13756-023-01309-w

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).