[Wound infection following surgical intervention for rheumatism and its relationship to preoperative basic therapy]

Theoretically, slow acting antirheumatic drugs are capable of affecting the body's infection resistance. We have therefore analyzed the records of all 558 RA-patients hospitalized and operated on at our department from 1985-1987 with respect to the incidence of post-surgical wound infections and possible links to previous treatment with slow acting antirheumatic drugs. A total of 2456 operations were performed, or 4.4 per patient. Severe complications due to infection occurred in 24 patients (0.98%). The slow acting drugs had no effect on the complications rate.