Clean Cut (adaptive, multimodal surgical infection prevention programme) for low-resource settings: a prospective...

Area of Science:

• Global Health
• Surgical Safety
• Infection Prevention

Background:

• Surgical-site infections (SSIs) pose a significant challenge, particularly in low-income countries.
• The Clean Cut program was developed to address improvement opportunities and safety changes in surgery.
• It focuses on enhancing outcomes surveillance, closing infection prevention gaps, and strengthening care processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess a simple intervention for improving perioperative infection prevention practices.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of the Clean Cut program in reducing SSIs in resource-limited settings.
• To identify barriers and local improvement opportunities in surgical infection prevention.

Main Methods:

• The Clean Cut program was implemented across five hospitals in Ethiopia.
• Compliance with six key perioperative infection prevention standards was monitored.
• Process-mapping was used to identify barriers, and patient outcomes were tracked for 30 days.

Main Results:

• Compliance with infection prevention standards increased from a mean of 2.9 to 4.5 after program implementation (P < 0.001).
• The relative risk of surgical infections decreased by 35% following Clean Cut implementation (RR 0.65, P=0.043).
• Improved adherence to standards reduced postoperative infection risk by 46%.

Conclusions:

• The Clean Cut program effectively improved infection prevention standards.
• The intervention successfully reduced the incidence of SSIs.
• This approach achieved significant improvements without necessitating infrastructure or resource investments.