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With today's emphasis on improving healthcare quality while decreasing cost, understanding the true costs of surgical site infections (SSIs) is important. Using data from the Veterans Affairs Surgical Quality Improvement Program and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Decision Support System, investigators performed a retrospective cohort analysis to assess SSI-associated costs among patients who underwent inpatient surgery at Veterans Affairs hospitals.
Between October 2009 and September 2010, 54,233 patients underwent surgery at any of the 129 hospitals involved; 1756 of them (3%) developed SSIs (superficial in 74%, deep in 26%). Risk factors for SSIs included emergency surgery, recent heavy alcohol use, diabetes, chronic obstructive …