Staphylococcus aureus surgical site infection rates in 5 European countries
Sibylle C. Mellinghoff, C. Bruns, Markus Albertsmeier, Juliane Ankert, Louis Bernard, Sofia Budin, Camille Bataille, Annika Y. Claßen, Florian B. Cornely, Elodie Couvé-Deacon, Maria Carmen Olivé Ferrer, Jesús Fortün, Alicia Galar, Eva Grill, Thomas Guimard, Jürgen A. Hampl, Sebastian Wingen‐Heimann, Juan Pablo Horcajada, Felix Köhler, Carolin Koll, Joan Mollar, Patricia Muñoz, Mathias W. Pletz, Jule Rutz, Jon Salmanton‐García, Harald Seifert, Ferdinand Serracino‐Inglott, Àlex Soriano, Jannik Stemler, Jörg Janne Vehreschild, Tim O. Vilz, Jan‐Hendrik Naendrup, Oliver A. Cornely, Blasius Liss
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).