INTRODUCTION OF A SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM FO R SURGICAL-WOUND INFECTION BASED ON THE WHOCARE SOFTWARE PROVIDED BY THE WHO

Surveillance of surgical wound-infection (SWI) is an important instrum ent in the internal and external quality control in surgery. In the pa st it has been shown that statistics on surgical wound infection are h elpful for reduction of wound infection rates. With the engagement of nurses for clinical hygiene at our hospital we had the possibility to evaluate programs for surveillance of nosocomial infection. In a pilot study we began with the surveillance of SWI, The set of data register ed was defined by WHOCARE, the software-package used in the study whic h is distributed by the WHO Europe. Criteria of the NNIS-Study for SWI were applied. Between March and December 1992 approximately 1.300 sur gical interventions had been registered. Although the dataset in WHOCA RE is limited with regard to an easy surveillance, it was possible to find out infection rates dependent on all major parameters. Additional ly reports on individual infection rates and tables containing informa tion of infected cases were sent to every surgeon. By analyzing some o f the problems detected during the study, we developed an improved pro tocol for routine surveillance of SWI. In the future it will save time and will allow the best quality of collected data in narrow collabora tion between the departments of microbiology, clinical hygiene and sur gery. This protocol should be transferable to other hospitals and repr esents an anticipated precautious measure with regard to legal regulat ions on quality control in medicine.