Incidence of surgical site infections in pediatric patients: a 3-month prospective study in an academic pediatric surgical unit

During a 3-month period 259 pediatric surgical procedures in 236 patients w ere followed for the development of surgical site infections (SSI): 17 site s became infected, an overall infection rate of 6.6%. The incidence in our study was therefore higher than expected. As expected, the infection rate i ncreased according to wound contamination: dirty sites had a SSI rate of 30 %. Emergency procedures, operation duration over 1 h, and inpatients showed a statistically significant higher risk of developing SSI. Although there were differences between males and females, individual surgeons, and the us e of antibiotic prophylaxis, these differences were not statistically signi ficant.